Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I normally do not rise in a negative mood, but today I highlight the misleading advertising being produced by the Labor Party in my electorate of Hasluck. This week, half-page advertisements in some local papers by Senator Pratt stated that the Gillard government is delivering the biggest investments ever into WA schools. The advertisements also claim that Labor is helping families balance the budget. These points are misleading and an attempt by the Prime Minister to stop the bleeding of her credibility in my electorate. Just last week, for example, coalition senators stopped Labor from axing the childcare rebate, hardly the position of a government that is helping the family budget to balance. In contrast, this is the first budget delivered by a federal government in eight years that is not providing tax cuts for everyday Australians. In fact, Labor is stripping away $2 billion in support for families and imposing $6 billion worth of new and higher taxes.

As for Hasluck schools, Labor's waste gets worse. The computers in schools program has blown out by a further $200 million, taking the total cost up to $1.4 billion. Add to this $11.6 million extra in waste spending by the Gillard Labor government to clean up the mess left behind by the Building the Education Revolution. These vast sums of money are just numbers to Labor governments which rely so heavily on tax and spend instead of being fiscally responsible with my constituents' money.

My office receives calls and emails every day from constituents concerned about Labor's failed border protection policies. It has lost control of Australia's borders and the cost of maintaining asylum seekers has bloated to $1.75 billion since last year's budget. The so-called Malaysian solution alone is approaching $300 million. That is $2 billion wasted by this reckless alliance of the Greens, Independents and Labor members. Just imagine for a minute what $2 billion would do for schools, local government and the broader families in Australia. But thanks to Labor this $2 billion will never be spent on Australian citizens. Finally, the biggest hypocrisy of the misleading advertisements is the failure to mention the impact of the carbon tax on local families and businesses. Details are scant from this Labor government and this is creating uncertainty across many industries. What we do know is that, under the Gillard-Brown carbon tax, at a carbon price of $26 a tonne, average power bills will rise by $300 a year, petrol prices will increase by 6.5c a litre and grocery prices will increase by five per cent. What the final carbon price will be, though, is hard to determine at this point. Some Green politicians have talked about making it $100 a tonne. This would drive prices sky-high when times are already hard on the families of Hasluck. I call on the Labor government to inject some honesty into its advertisements and I reject the misleading claims made by the Prime Minister and Senator Pratt in this advertisement. (Time expired)