Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

When the minister indicates that the country wants leadership, I dare say the country wants more. What the country wants more of is honest leadership. It wants people who are going for high office to honour and to uphold the commitments they made to the Australian people. What we have found is that a reaction has occurred across the country—a recoil has occurred—from people seeing what the government have done and contrasting it with what they committed to do when they were in opposition—and they cannot even defend themselves. When people questioned the Prime Minister about whether or not this budget is fair dinkum, legit and upholding what they said, he said that the budget was 'fundamentally honest'. It is not wholeheartedly honest; it is 'fundamentally honest'. It is like 'I'm fundamentally not guilty' or 'I may be fundamentally right.' They cannot even uphold what they are doing. The reason is that there are a plethora of quotes which demonstrate that he is going to have a problem saying that he is 'fundamentally honest'. It is sort of like 'honest John' was really honest! You do realise that when they used to be called him 'honest John' it was done tongue-in-cheek—just like this commitment about your own budget being fundamentally honest.

I was wondering why there were so many senior people who looked like they were getting a sunburn. In actual fact, they all had these red foreheads. It was from the palms that keep going up to their forehead when they read all the Tony Abbott quotes. Let us look at the Prime Minister's quotes—and I have some here, funnily enough. He said:

It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.

That is what he said.

We stand for lower, simpler, fairer taxes, not great big new taxes …

That was in 2010. What about the other one on the flood levy.

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