Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This place just gets weirder and weirder and weirder. It is a little bit weird to have the member for Bruce—and I like the member for Bruce—in this place talking about the Kama Sutra. He has probably spent a bit too much time with his friends from the HSU. I also noticed that the member for Bruce talked about the Howard government and the Rudd government, but he seemed to forget the period of the last few years—and it is probably a bigger proportion of my life than it is of his life. There was the period of the Gillard government. It is probably important that we remind the House about the period of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. I think it is very strange that we have 'Mr Loyalty' himself, the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, coming into this place and talking about the importance of trust. It is very strange, and the member for Bruce and the entire Labor Party would do well to pick up the phone to either the former member for Griffith, Kevin Rudd, or the former member for Lalor, Julia Gillard, and talk to them about what the Leader of the Opposition actually thinks about trust and self-interest.

When we come to this place it is important that we are upfront and honest with the Australian people. The Leader of the Opposition was the person who said: 'Don't worry, Kevin. I am right behind you. I am right behind you.' And he was right behind him—with a big knife, waiting to put it into his back. The Leader of the Opposition talks about trust. He came into this place and he told the Australian people: 'Don't worry, I am right behind the Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Don't worry, I am right behind her.' And then, of course, he assassinated her as quickly as he assassinated Kevin Rudd. This motion before the House is about trust. It is incredibly important that we do uphold our commitments to the Australian people. That is exactly what this government is doing. We promised the Australian people that we would get rid of the carbon tax, a tax that costs Australian families, on average, $550 a year. We brought a bill before this House to remove that tax. That bill is now going to the Senate, and it is up to the Labor Party to decide: do they want to give relief to people in my electorate and to Australian families across the country? But we took that to an election and we are delivering on our promises.

That is very different to, and it is in stark contrast with, what those opposite did. Before the 2010 election, we saw the Labor Party come out and heard the former Prime Minister, Prime Minister Gillard, say, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Not only did she promise that there would be no carbon tax but she promised that she would set up a climate consensus or a forum to discuss these sorts of issues. To follow it up, the member for Lilley, the former Treasurer, came out and said, 'We reject any hysterical allegation that there will be any carbon tax,' and yet the last election was a referendum on a tax that the Labor Party promised never to introduce. So we are absolutely honouring our commitments to the Australian people by passing a bill through this House and sending it to the Senate to repeal a tax that the Labor Party promised to never introduce.

And then, of course, we talk about promises before an election. Kevin Rudd before the 2007 election said: 'I'm an economic conservative. You can trust me. You can trust me with your money'—because ultimately governments spend the people's money, not their own—'because I'm an economic conservative.' They promised on literally hundreds of occasions to deliver a budget surplus.

Mr Van Manen interjecting—

As the member for Forde points out, on over 500 occasions they promised to deliver a budget surplus and to be the economic conservatives that they told the Australian people they would be. Instead, the Labor Party delivered the biggest deficits we have ever seen in history. They actually turned nearly $50 billion in the bank, $50 billion that we left them, into a projected net debt well over $200 billion. Even though they promised to be economic conservatives, what they actually delivered was the fastest deterioration in debt in dollar terms and as a share of GDP in modern Australian history. That is their record. They promised the Australian people that they would be economic conservatives. They promised the Australian people that they would deliver budget surpluses. But they presided over the biggest increase in our debt that the Australian people have ever seen.

Now it is up to us, as we promised the Australian people, to clean up the mess that the Labor Party has left us, because it is future generations of Australians that will benefit from it. (Time expired)

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