Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is it important to deliver economic reform through a bipartisan commitment to act in the national interest—in particular on climate change?

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for his question and know he is guided in this place by serving the national interest. We had the opposition laugh at this question because this is an opposition that think the word ‘reform’ and the concept of reform are to be laughed at. That is their only contribution to the public debate. It was not always like this. The Liberal Party did not historically lie as low as it does today. Historically the big economic transformations in this country have had bipartisan support. That was true under the Hawke and Keating governments when major reforms like floating the dollar and reducing tariffs got strong bipartisan support.

Of course, I was never a fan of former Prime Minister John Howard, but I do give him this: faced with the choice when he was in opposition of going and looking for fear or supporting economic reform in the nation’s interest, he chose to support economic reform. Now, in the challenge that we face today, a challenge of pricing carbon, what do we see? Each and every day we see the Leader of the Opposition putting his political interest before the national interest. That is what he does every day that he comes into this place. He uses a scare campaign before even giving the matter any proper consideration or using his better judgment.

Let us go through the examples. On national health reform, before I even announced the new national health reform agreement, the Leader of the Opposition was on people’s TV screens, bagging it and saying it was wrong. He did not even bother to read it before saying no. On the National Broadband Network, the Leader of the Opposition, who clearly does not understand the power of this technology, before he bothered to inform himself about the economic benefits and the service benefits for Australians, just said no. On the flood levy—and it is a very important example today—when this government were working through how we would fund our commitment to rebuilding Queensland and rebuilding the nation, the Leader of the Opposition just said no. A levy was good enough for him to fund his election promises but it was not good enough for him to support the people of Queensland by supporting that levy.

Now, in the tradition of those scare campaigns, we have the Leader of the Opposition trying to raise fear on pricing carbon. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that we will keep staring his fear campaign down. What the Leader of the Opposition needs to do is come clean on his attitude to climate change. He should stand before the Australian people and admit that he is a climate change denier. He should come before the Australian people and say that he has supported a carbon tax in the past and that the only reason he says no now is that he is motivated by the politics of the issue. And he should say to the Australian people that he stands for taking assistance out of their hands. If we provide tax cuts to assist, he will take them away. If we provide pension increases to assist, he will take them away. If we provide direct payments to assist, he will take them away. The Leader of the Opposition stands for taking money from Australian households. He should come very clean about that.