George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

but the member for McMahon just shows the hypocrisy of this government. The reality is, we are being the government that we promised to be. More than that, we are being the government that the Australian people expect us to be. A government that actually says what it means and does what it says. An adult government—a government committed to axing the carbon tax and the mining tax; a government committed to stopping the boats and securing our borders; a government committed to getting rid of the red tape in order to build this nation.

What hypocrisy we have seen in the speeches from those opposite. These were the people who said they were going to be fiscal conservatives before one election and then went in and blew the bank. They blew everything that was in the kitty—on Pink Batts, on overpriced school halls; you name it, they blew it. These are the same people that promised over and over again, hundreds of times in fact, that they were going to achieve a surplus. But where is the surplus? Debt and deficit is all we got from the last regime. And finally, these were the guys that promised, infamously, before the 2010 election that there would be no carbon tax under the government they led, and what did they do immediately after that? They brought in a carbon tax that has helped to wreck this economy. More than that, they promised just before the last election that they were going to get rid of the carbon tax—they actually said that they had gotten rid of it—but it is still here. And here they are in this chamber, these hypocrites, opposing our measures to try and repeal the carbon tax. They can't even keep their own promises. We have seen it time and time again. That is what we have come to expect from this lot. But now they are trying to stop this government, this adult government, from keeping its promises. They have the hypocrisy to come in here and talk about keeping promises and lecture us. In the last parliament 149 out of 150 members had gone to the election promising there would be no carbon tax, and Labor gave us one anyway. In this parliament, 149 out of 150 members went to the election promising again that there would be no carbon tax, and now they want to keep it.

Let us look at what the Liberal-National government promised the Australian public before the election and compare that with what is happening right now. We promised a number of important things to get this country back on track. We promised to build a strong and prosperous economy and to build a safe and secure Australia. At the election, the people agreed with our plan, giving a strong mandate to implement that plan with a resounding yes. We promised to axe the carbon tax, to end the waste, to stop the boats and to build the roads of the 21st century. Repealing the carbon tax is a key initiative in removing the roadblocks that Labor and the Greens put into our economy. We promised to remove that tax to get the monkey off the back of industry and to lower power prices for families. We told the Australian people that the carbon tax repeal would be our first order of business, and it has been, despite the efforts of those opposite to frustrate things today. We promised to scrap the mining tax, and indeed that is coming. We promised to stop the boats, and since Operation Sovereign Borders has commenced, the number of boat arrivals has fallen by 75 per cent. In contrast, these guys—Labor—dismantled the Howard government's proven border protection policies, which resulted in more than 50,000 illegal arrivals by boat on their watch, creating a blow-out of $11.6 billion.

We promised to cut red tape. Already we have commenced a commission of audit to end duplication and ensure that people get value for their tax dollars. We have already identified needless red and green tape that is choking industry. We have got agreements in place with Queensland and New South Wales to move towards a one-stop environmental assessment shop. That will create huge savings in time and money for business while enforcing environmental standards. We have already started making the tax system fairer by cleaning up the books that these guys left. Last week the government dealt with 93 tax measures that were left unlegislated and unresolved by the Labor government. We have already moved to get rid of Labor's $1.8 billion FBT hit on the car industry.

We have made these promises and we are delivering them because we want to get on with building the nation that people actually want. We are keeping the promises that we made, because they are about building a strong economy, like the one we should have. We are about being a government that we promised we would be—an adult government that is axing the taxes, stopping the boats and cutting the waste in order to build the nation. (Time expired)

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