Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

They thought that was good government policy. This particular shadow minister here was the one who brought the great super-trawler to Australia, and when the heat came on he stopped the super-trawler from coming into Australia. He was one of the most dangerous vandals to ever hold office in the cabinet of Australia.

The list goes on. When we took over, in 2013, thanks to the Australian public, we were faced with $123 billion of deficits as far as the eye could see. If we had done nothing at all, our debt would have risen to $667 billion—$123 billion of deficits and $667 billion of debt. That is the legacy that Labor left us.

But it is even worse. It was this Leader of the Opposition who brought the CFMEU back into the cabinet room and gave them a seat at the cabinet table. As the minister for industrial relations, he structured industrial relations in this country so that the CFMEU would be able to bring their thuggery, their standover tactics and their outright criminality to building and construction sites throughout the country, once again, having been forced off them by the Australian Building and Construction Commission, set up by the current Prime Minister many years ago.

The list is endless. They misled Australians on a grand scale. Who can forget the current member for Lilley standing up and announcing the 'three years of surpluses that I deliver tonight', knowing that they were never going to deliver a surplus and having not delivered one since 1989. This is the chaos and dysfunction that greeted us when we took over the Treasury benches in 2013. They mugged the mining industry with the mining tax. They mugged export exposed industries through the carbon tax. They cost households at least $550 a year in the electricity bills. They shut down small businesses reliant on electricity and gas, because of the carbon tax. They did all of these things and not unnaturally the Australian people decided to hand over the reigns of power to the current government.

What did we say? Our commitment was this, and I quote the current Prime Minister: 'This is what a Liberal and National Party government will do. We will build a stronger economy so that everyone can get ahead. Free trade agreements with Korea, China and with Japan. A growing economy with 109,000 jobs, at least, created by this government. We will scrap the carbon tax so that your family will be $550 a year better off.' Done. The carbon tax has been abolished. Labor wants to bring it back. We will get the budget back under control by ending Labor's waste, and that is what we are doing, right across government. No agency, no authority and no department should be immune from trying to be less wasteful and spend taxpayers money as well as they possibly can. The government's money is not sitting in the Treasury somewhere, belonging to the government; it belongs to the Australian people, Madam Speaker, and we should never waste one dollar—let alone never apply an efficiency dividend—to an authority that has a $6.9 billion dollar budget over the next five years—for 20 years. The ABC had no efficiency dividend for 20 years. We will stop the boats—tick; we have certainly stopped the boats. This shadow minister, again, said it could not be done. The Left said: 'It is not possible. It is impossible to stop the boats.' What has happened? In the last 12 months, while the Minister for Immigration has been at the helm, the boats have stopped. The children are getting out of detention. We are closing detention centres, whether it is at Curtin or whether it is at Inverbrackie. The Australian public are not stupid, Madam Speaker. They see all these things. They certainly listen to the static that goes on in this place and elsewhere—but they know in their heart of hearts that the government is delivering on its promises.

The Prime Minister also said, 'and we will build the roads of the 21st century'—and that is exactly what we have done; we have started the process, having picked up the broken infrastructure portfolio from the current member for Grayndler. We are getting things done. They were good at announcing things, Madam Speaker. They were good at photo opportunities, although it did not save them. But the current minister for transport and infrastructure is actually getting the work done—to make sure that there are bulldozers moving, and that there are sods being turned on roads infrastructure—whether it is the North-South Corridor in South Australia or the East West Link in Victoria, this government knows that we have to get things done to create jobs and to create growth.

The fundamental difference between us and Labor and the Greens is that we do not just play politics every day; what we do, as cabinet minsters and as members of this government, is every day we think: 'How will we get more jobs flowing into our electorates? How do we get more growth in the economy? How do we repair the damage done by Labor, so that business can create jobs?' That is what we on this side of the House do. We did it in the Menzies era, we did it in the Fraser era, we did it in the Howard era, and we will do it again in the Abbott era. All Labor does is think every day, 'How can we play politics? How can we play politics with people's lives? How can we play politics with household budgets? How can we play politics with big developments like the Olympic Dam in South Australia? How can we give the unions more power and control, so they keep voting for us in preselection?' The fundamental difference between this side of the House and the opposition is this: we care about the Australian public, and they care about the Australian Labor Party. So we will keep doing what we are doing. We will keep governing for the betterment of Australia, and I am absolutely confident that at the next election, the Australian public will support us.

See this speech in context