Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable the Leader of the Opposition, proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Abbott Government’s failure to make the right choices and pursue the right priorities for Australia’s future

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government has got the wrong priorities. The Prime Minister has been under pressure for two days in a row with his most ridiculous honours scheme, which the whole of Australia regards as a laughing-stock—including, it would appear, the Minister for Communications, who referred to it as the precedent set by Guatemala and Peru. What we have seen in the last two days is the Prime Minister of Australia lose his composure. We know why he has lost his composure and we know why he gets personal. It is because he knows deep down, in the part of his heart which he does not examine often enough, that he has made a colossal mistake.

Since this government has been elected, we have made it very clear that this is a government who will never fight for anyone's jobs but their own. We have been at pains to demonstrate that they have the wrong priorities. But this week there have been three dreadful mistakes which have, I think, pushed the opposition's message right into the core of public consciousness.

There was this laughable bunyip aristocracy nonsense from the fawning attitudes of a very few in the government, who have said, when there is an economic problem like unemployment, when there is a challenge about the budget, 'What should we do? Let's create some knights and some dames.' What a very weak proposition that is. It is not just the opposition who know that that is weak. I compliment members of the government; I compliment the anonymous backbencher—not for his courage but maybe for his wisdom in staying anonymous—who said, 'This is absolutely insane.' We are having a sweep on this side on who in the government was smart enough to have thought of that; we have come up with 25 names.

Then we get to the member for Herbert, Ewen Jones. To be fair, he has a good turn of phrase sometimes. He makes us laugh, at least until that is made illegal in this House! He at least said, 'I guess there are other issues that we have got to work on.' Then you have Senator Ron Boswell. In 'Boswellian' style, without necessarily a lot of words, he expressed his surprise at this development. I acknowledge the elegant understatement of the member over there, whose seat I have momentarily forgotten, Mr Broadbent.

An honourable member: McMillan.

The member for McMillan. He is, I think, a proper, old school Liberal from the days when the Liberal Party might have been someone you could vote for. He said it was 'an interesting surprise'. I think that is a masterful understatement.

I, of course, liked what the Minister for Communications had to say last night. It was written up as 'gently mocking' the proposal—gentle! He is a known republican. I do not want him to run the next republic campaign, because we will lose it. I do know that he did say, dipping into its vast repository of republican knowledge, 'Well, they do it in Guatemala, they do it in Brazil and they do it in Peru, so why shouldn’t we do it here?' Why not indeed? I give him points for trying.

The knights and dames decision is not actually the worst decision they have made this week. It is certainty the funniest one they have made this week. One of the other bad decisions is the refusal to come out with a commission of audit. That is a cowardly government.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In good time.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kooyong sneers and says 'in good time'. We say a good time is before an election.

Government members interjecting—

He did not sneer; he smiled and he joked because he knows it is a joke. The simple message to the people of Western Australia is: if the Prime Minister does not trust Western Australians with the information about their commission of audit, why should Western Australians trust the Prime Minister? That is why you need to have a strong Senate team, not a rubber-stamp team who will simply sign through, sight unseen, cuts to services, to health care, to education and to jobs.

There is a third decision, which I believe is the most reprehensible of their priorities. The contender for the third could have been the cutting of benefits to the orphans—that is just stupid. There is no debate needed on that. That is literally one of the dumbest decisions I have ever seen an arrogant mob make: 1,200 kids, $215.60 each, 'Quick, let's cut that, because we said we would.' As if they ever said they would. Find me one document where they said, '1,239 orphans or double orphans, the children of totally and permanently disabled service people, or people who have made the ultimate sacrifice, will have benefits cut'. They never said that. What an unscrupulous bunch of scallywags they are!

But the worst decision this week is watering down the protections against bigotry and racism. There was some competition this week for the weakest contribution to public policy in parliament in Australia. The Prime Minister came close and, to be fair, the knights and dames decision deserves an honourable mention. But the silliest, the most outrageous and the worst statement, which I never expected to hear in the parliament, is that 'you have a right to be a bigot'—wow, a right to be a bigot!—from the Attorney-General of Australia. That must fill people who are concerned about being humiliated or vilified by racism with a lot of confidence. We have the Attorney-General of this country saying, 'There is a right to be a bigot.' I know that when the opposition raised this with the Prime Minister in question time on Tuesday there were members of the government who simply did not believe what we said. They literally thought we were making it up, because there are people of good spirit on that side, and I recognise that. There are people of good spirit on that side, Member for Hasluck. There are people of good spirit on that side, Member for Gippsland. Do not get your hopes up, Member for Kooyong—I will stop the list there. I do think he is in a difficult position; I just worry he has gone the wrong way.

What is wrong about this decision is that we should not be sending the message in a multicultural nation that it is okay to be a bigot. It is never okay to be a racist and it is never okay to be a bigot. Let me draw to the attention of the House Premier O'Farrell's comments. He has called the Abbott Liberal government for its disgraceful attitude. Premier O'Farrell said today:

Bigotry should never be sanctioned, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Vilification on the grounds of race or religion is always wrong. There is no place for inciting hatreds within our Australian society

Premier O'Farrell has said that bigotry should never be sanctioned, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Where on earth does that put the Attorney-General of Australia? Premier O'Farrell said what millions of Australians think, what every man and woman on this side of the parliament thinks and what tens of thousands of members of the public listening to Parliament know: it is not okay to be a bigot.

When the Attorney-General of Australia says there is a right to be a bigot, that is a wrong priority. When they want to lower the protections in 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, when they want to disarm the guardians of protecting, all Australians, those are wrong priorities. When you are an Australian, it should not matter your religion, it should not matter your gender, and it certainly should not matter your ethnicity.

I am proud of the fact that nearly 27 in every 100 Australians were born overseas. I am proud of the fact that, since 1945, we have brought 7.5 million Australians here to become Australian citizens. I am proud that, in my electorate of Maribyrnong, 51 in every 100 Australians has a language other than English at home. I am very proud of the fact that this is the most migrant nation in the world. I am not proud of the Attorney-General of Australia. I am not proud of the Abbott Liberal government changing the laws. I do not accept that bigotry is okay.

I agree with Premier O'Farrell. I agree, in this case, with Warren Mundine, who described the whole thing as quite offensive. I agree with Vic Alhadeff, the Chief Executive Officer of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, that it is a retrograde step that significantly weakens protections. I agree with Colin Rubenstein, head of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, that to pass the amendments as they stand would risk emboldening racists. I also happen to agree with the million Australians who visited our Facebook to express their concern about racism.

This is the week of freedom of speech, but when you have the Attorney-General of Australia advocating the right of people to be bigots, that is not freedom of speech—that is abuse of freedom of speech. This week we have seen a government with wrong priorities: this facile distraction of honours—of knights and dames—and the unwillingness to reveal the Commission of Audit. This is a shifty, sneaky government with the wrong priorities. If they will persist in defending the right of people to be bigots and trampling the rights of others, we will oppose them every day until the next election. (Time expired)

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to speak on this MPI. I was going to start by speaking about our economic record, but the Leader of the Opposition raises the issue of multiculturalism. I want to say that, on this side of the House, we are pleased and proud that the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives is our colleague, Ken Wyatt. We on this side of the House are proud that, if we won every seat at the last election, the most common name in the party room of the coalition would have been Nguyen. We are proud, on this side of the House, that I, the member for Kooyong, am the first ever Jewish Liberal member of the House of Representatives. We are proud, on this side of the House, that the Father of the House, Phillip Ruddock, has done more than anyone in this parliament to support immigrant communities and to uphold the values that we hold dear. We will not be lectured in this House by the sanctimonious Leader of the Opposition who tells us that they understand migrant communities better than we do.

We have a very proud record that goes back to the start of Federation. The member for Kooyong in the 1930s, Sir John Latham, was the first ever foreign minister to go to Asia on a designated trip. Malcolm Fraser opened the doors to thousands and thousands of Vietnamese boat people to come to this country, and John Howard lifted immigration to the highest records this country has ever known. That is the proud record of my party and this Prime Minister, and we will not be lectured by the other side.

I have come to this dispatch box to do more than defend the record of this government. I have come to inform the opposition that we have had to correct the economic mess that they left us after six disastrous years in government. I remind the House that the Labor Party, under the Rudd and Gillard governments, gave us not only three Prime Ministers in less than six years, multiple foreign ministers and defence ministers, and six ministers for small business but also the disasters of Fuelwatch, GroceryWatch, 'cash for clunkers', the overpriced school halls, the pink batts disaster and record debt and deficit.

That is your legacy of five and a half years in government—$667 billion of debt over the coming decade. That is the equivalent of $23,000 for every Australian man, woman and child, and a $12 billion annual interest bill. I can inform those opposite that, when we were in government, we had zero government debt. We paid back your $96 billion of debt, but we did not have to fork out $12 billion every year just to pay the interest on your bill. That is the equivalent of more than 12 teaching hospitals every year that could be built around Australia. That is more than the East West Link and more than the National Disability Insurance Scheme—and that is just the price of your debt. And, what is more, under the previous Labor government we had more than 200,000 unemployed. Those on this side of the House would know that the number of long-term unemployed people—people who are unemployed for more than 52 weeks—doubled under the past Labor government. Youth unemployment went from 19 to 27 per cent; one in 10 jobs in manufacturing was lost. And childcare clinics, GP superclinics and trade training centres were always promised but never delivered.

I want to tell you what the 10 priorities have been for the Abbott government in just the six months we have been in government. The first has been paying back the debt. We have more than $20 billion in savings sitting before the Senate. We have commissioned Tony Shepherd to produce a commission of audit which will allow us to go about fixing the fiscal mess that they left us. Second, we are about reintroducing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which is a cop on the beat. In 2004 there were 224 days lost for every 1,000 employees due to industrial disputation, but just two years later, in 2006—as a result of the ABCC—that was cut from 224 to just 24 days. It was a $6 billion annual productivity dividend to the Australian people. We are also about having the Royal Commission into union malfeasance, because we need to get to the bottom of that mess.

The third priority for us is about serious tax reform and abolishing the punishing carbon tax and the mining tax that produces no revenue. In Western Australia, as they come before an election in the coming week, they know that getting rid of the carbon tax and the mining tax will be a green light to investment in that state. And we are committed to serious tax reform in commissioning a white paper—because under Labor they had the Henry Tax Review, and the only recommendation they took up was the disastrous mining tax. Do you know that in Australia we have 125 taxes? And 115 of those taxes produce just 10 per cent of the revenue. We have 10 taxes that produce 90 per cent of the revenue. We are over-taxed at the different layers of government. We need genuine tax reform.

The fourth area we are going to focus on is trade. We have already made major steps forward with South Korea, and the Prime Minister's upcoming trip to South Korea will be an important stamp on that free trade agreement. We are also proceeding abreast with Japan and with China. The fifth priority is about infrastructure. This Prime Minister is going to be the Infrastructure Prime Minister—$6.7 billion for the Bruce Highway, $5.6 billion for the Pacific Highway, $1½ billion for the East West Link in Victoria, and $1½ billion for WestConnex. They are some of the major infrastructure spending proposals that we are going to carry through.

Sixth is education, which is a major priority for us, because we have restored $1.2 billion that Labor ripped out of the school budgets. We are better for schools than they will ever be. Seventh is boats. We are about stopping the boats—it is 98 days since the last unauthorised boat arrival. More than 50,000 unauthorised arrivals came on Labor's watch. More than $11 billion was blown in the budget and, tragically, more than 1,000 people lost their lives at sea. And as the Prime Minister told the House today, four detention centres have now closed. The eighth priority is victims of terrorism. The Prime Minister made it very clear that one of his first actions on coming into government would be to ensure that victims of terrorism after 10 September 2001 would be able to accept a payment from the government. That was an incredibly important initiative by the Prime Minister.

Ninth is the NBN. What a mess the Labor Party left us with the NBN. Those on this side of the House know that nearly six years have passed—$7 billion has been spent—but only three per cent of the NBN rollout has been completed. Shame on you, Labor Party. Senator Conroy, who has made a fool of himself in relation to the Defence Force, had absolutely wrecked the NBN rollout, and it is now up to Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications, to clean up that mess.

In my last minute I want to talk about the 10th priority for this government—and it is no surprise to those on this side of the House. It is about cutting red and green tape. We had a successful repeal day where we got rid of more than 10,000 acts and regulations that were dragging down productivity, dragging down innovation, and were a drag on investment and the creation of jobs. We have avoided duplication between the state and federal levels, we have streamlined existing processes, and we are trying to remove ourselves from the nanny state that Labor created. We are determined to free up the private sector and the not-for-profit sector to do what they do best: to employ people and to help those most in need. This government is a government of action. This government is a government with a proud record, and we will not be lectured to by the other side, who gave us six of the worst years of government this country has ever seen.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week, perhaps more than in any other week of this government, we have seen their priorities. We have seen a government introduce a scheme so anachronistic that not even John Winston Howard thought it was a good idea, and he has distanced himself from it. We have seen a government embrace old imperial honours that have been gone for almost 30 years, but a government that today trashed the Westminster tradition in this House for their own partisan advantage. They love tradition when it comes to honours for themselves, but they hate tradition when it comes to a fair parliament.

But even more than that, we have seen their priorities when it comes to the budget. We have seen them playing partisan politics with the budget just as they have played partisan politics with the traditions of this parliament. This is a very transparent game. We have called it for what it is, and we will continue to call it for what it is. It is a transparent game to inflate the projections on budget deficits, for their own cheap and tawdry partisan politics. They are talking down the national economy for their own cheap political gains.

How are they doing this? We have seen it on display in the House this week. We had the Treasurer's mid-year economic forecast. He was beating his chest, huffing and puffing as he so likes to do, with big numbers on budget deficits. However, when you look at the analysis, one deficit after another has been added to by this government as a result of their own decisions—$68 billion worth has been added to the budget deficits over the projection period, more than doubling the deficit.

How have they done this? Just have a look at what happened in the House this week. We had the Deputy Leader of the Opposition ask a very straightforward question to the Prime Minister: 'What is the government's policy on overseas development assistance, and when will they meet the target of 0.5 per cent of gross national income?' The Prime Minister gave an honest answer. He said it is an aspiration. We would like to get there one day, but not until the budget is back in surplus. Fair enough, that is government policy. But what does the government's budget document say? What does their mid-year economic forecast very clearly say, in black and white? It says that target will be met at the cost of billions of dollars in 2017-18, and it is not even government policy.

Why would that be the case? Why would the Treasurer—this is his document with his name on it—have that written into the mid-year economic forecast when it does not represent the government's position to inflate the deficit by billions of dollars?

We have also seen the Treasurer fail at the dispatch box to defend his projections on company profits—growing at nine per cent per annum, but he cut the projections to a quarter of their long-run average to try to reduce the projections on government revenue and make the deficits bigger. We have also seen the $9 billion transfer to the Reserve Bank of Australia, which was not asked for, not requested, but gifted by this Treasurer to inflate the budget deficit, and that in the hope of getting dividends from the Reserve Bank of Australia in future years. Those are the lengths this Treasurer will go to. This is not a Treasury position and it is not a Department of Finance position. These are all decisions of the Treasurer of Australia.

We have even see him change the methodology for forecasting unemployment—the same methodology that applied when I was Treasurer, that applied when the member for Lilley was Treasurer and that applied when Peter Costello was Treasurer. But, no, that methodology is not good enough for this Treasurer. He had to change it in order to inflate the budget deficit yet again. As much as $68 billion has been added to the budget deficits by changes in the economic assumptions and by the spending decisions of the Treasurer.

Why would they do this? What game are they playing? It is very clear what they are doing here. They are inflating the budget deficits for two reasons. First, to soften up the Australian people for cuts they always intended to make; cuts they always in their hearts wanted to make; cuts that they kept secret during the election campaign; cuts that are contained in a 900-page document that the Prime Minister has seen, the Treasurer has seen, the Minister for Finance has seen, but not even the rest of the Cabinet has seen—let alone the voters of Western Australia, who will go to the polls in a couple of weeks without the benefit of knowing what their government has in store.

The second reason is to help their attempt to mislead the Australian people about the legacy of the previous government, for their own cheap and tawdry purposes. I give credit to Peter Costello for introducing the Charter of Budget Honesty Act, and that means this game is false, because the days of a Treasurer playing this game are gone. The state of the budget, inherited by this government, was in the pre-election economic forecast. Anything the Treasurer has done since are his tawdry games.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have seen the wording of this matter of public importance and we have heard from the shadow Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition. We on this side of the House look at those former members of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, and I have to say it is as competitive as an Olympic 100-metre final. It really is, but for all the wrong reasons. It is a photo finish as to who has the worst policy record. We sat here during the interrupted question time thinking: who could have penned this Matter of public importance? It is a matter of public importance that is based on the premise that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments made the right choices and had the right priorities for Australia.

You can argue with us, but do not argue with the outcome of the election, which was an endorsement of the choices and priorities that are now being pursued by members on this side so that we can restore what Labor damaged or destroyed. For the shadow Treasurer to stand here and lecture this side of the House on budget ethics, budget honesty, or budget competence is absolutely astounding. But as I said before, they are nothing if not un-embarrassable.

The member for Lilley rightly cops a lot of opprobrium from this side of the House. He is easily the worst Treasurer in our nation's history. I do not say that lightly. I say that after reflecting on even the Whitlam government Treasurers. They might have been as bad, but he had longer to do more damage, and damage he did.

Now we have the Labor Party, watching the government in this House, on behalf of the Australian people, clean up the mess Labor caused. We have to deal with Labor's chaos. They complain about the clean-up. It is absolutely unbelievable, particularly for the shadow Treasurer, who began back in 2007 as the Assistant Treasurer, to be lecturing on policy competence. His first three acts were: Fuelwatch, and it was a fool watch; Grocery Choice; and the employee share schemes debacle. After the shocker of the employee share schemes and the fall of Fuelwatch, he then caps it off in his last months as Treasurer in the Rudd government. And what is he going to be remembered for in that campaign? For misleading and misrepresenting Treasury costings documents. The Treasury themselves, together with the Department of Finance, in an unprecedented move in an election campaign, belled the cat on the shadow Treasurer.

Then you look at what happened with the budget. The previous speaker on this side went through—and no doubt the next speakers on this side will go through it again, as they should—Labor's dramatic fiscal failure. It was absolutely unbelievable—and for the shadow Treasurer to be lecturing! He talked about the Reserve Bank replenishment. He did not talk about the Reserve Bank Reserve Fund. You only need to look at the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank. I know my friend and colleague the member for Higgins, on the Standing Committee on Economics, has asked many questions on this very point. It requires a certain human capacity to ignore the truth with a straight face, to actually ignore documents signed off by the Reserve Bank governor. This is a special skill that those opposite have. I do not know whether they go to a factory to learn this skill or whether they are programmed with this skill, but they have this great capacity to look people in the eye and say, 'Collingwood won last year's grand final.' They just say it with such conviction. But the Reserve Bank governor—it is in black and white, as the member for Higgins will outline—said, 'Don't take a dividend; don't run down the Reserve Bank Reserve Fund.' He is only the Reserve Bank governor; what would he know! It is there in black and white. He wrote to the Treasurer saying, 'Don't do it.' Then they mount some argument that the Reserve Bank Reserve Fund should not be replenished. This is the last sitting day before the budget. What Labor have demonstrated is that they are just as fiscally incompetent as they were six months ago.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the call, Deputy Speaker Scott. This place would be a much fairer place if you were in charge full time, so we are very pleased to have you in the chair. It could not be any less fair, so we are very pleased to be joining you this afternoon.

This week the government discovered time travel. We went back in time to the nostalgic world that the Prime Minister occupies, the black-and-white world where it is okay to be a bigot.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I ask that you draw the speaker's attention to the fact that he should not reflect upon the chair, which he has done in his opening statement here today. I ask him to withdraw.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not a reflection on the chair. It was a personal comment, I think. There is no point of order.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me reword it and say that the Deputy Speaker is a very fair man.

We returned this week and the government discovered time travel. We went back in time to this black-and-white nostalgic world that the Prime Minister occupies, a world where it is okay to be a bigot, where people are walking around tugging the forelock—'M'Lord, M'Lady', all this sort of crazy stuff—a world of dirt roads clogged up with carriages, with servants, with women like the member for Higgins knocking on the door of the cabinet room, locked out of the cabinet room. That is the world that our Prime Minister operates in.

One of the Prime Minister's heroes is Margaret Thatcher, of course. She said famously, in a great quote, that she did not have a reverse gear. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister does not have any gears that go forwards. He is unlike Margaret Thatcher in that respect. It must been devastating for a retro Prime Minister like our own to see that not even John Howard could be as old-fashioned as he was. You are in trouble when John Howard is calling you old-fashioned!

The truth is that Australia does have a whole range of challenges, and they lie in the future, not in the past. Our challenges are not found 50 or 100 years ago; they lie in the future. We have an uncertain labour market. We have all the things that flow from the massive middle-classing of Asia—all the challenges and opportunities that brings, all of the changing industrial base, all of what it means for global inequality, all of what rising technology means for training, for human capital and all these sorts of things. How we respond to these big global pressures will really determine whether in the future we rise or fall as a nation. These are the crucial issues that we have got.

The member for Wakefield was right to say before that our current Prime Minister makes Joe Lyons look progressive, but I want to comment on something that the Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, said, because I also agree with that. He said that the Australian people want us focused on jobs, the economy, growth and prosperity. I could not agree more, but what have we got instead? We have got a Prime Minister sitting around dreaming of knights and dames and all the rest of it. The Treasurer was right to say we should be on about jobs. The Prime Minister is sitting in his office under the portrait of the Queen, thinking about knights and dames. That is really the problem that we have got with his priorities and his choices.

I read in the paper today that somebody said of the Attorney-General that he has drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid. The truth is that the whole show over that side must have drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid. You can imagine them sitting around clinking their glasses—'Servant, bring me more Kool-Aid, I tell you!'—and drinking the Kool-Aid. My point about this is: you can drink the right-wing Kool-Aid if you want, but do not make the whole country drink it. Some of us want to get on with dealing with the big challenges in our community.

More than any other week, this week shone the light on the bad choices and wrong priorities of the government. Yes, some of it was pretty funny, as my colleague at the table here, the member for Franklin, found. Some of it was a bit funny, but a lot of it was really serious. The priorities are so skewed in this government. There are serious problems: a PPL scheme that gives $75,000 to the wealthiest mums; tax breaks for the people at the very top of the income scale—all at the same time as they are cutting money for orphans. They are introducing a GP tax. They are attacking cleaners, via repeal day. They are attacking charities. They are attacking seniors who want good financial advice. This all shows how skewed their priorities are.

As the member for McMahon, the shadow Treasurer, said, this Treasurer has doubled the deficit—he has added $68 billion to the deficit. When he has got a problem like this in his budget, in his MYEFO, we have got a government running around talking about knights and dames. That is really the problem. Australians want a government with the right policies, with the right choices and with an eye to the future. Unfortunately for them, the big shame is that, instead of that, they have got this lot.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak today on this matter of public importance, which I think is about pots calling kettles black or great cases of irony in parliament. This is one. I follow the member for Rankin, and I suppose I can be grateful for one thing—that, unlike his predecessor, he is not going to burst into song. We are being lectured here by members of the opposition about the government making the right choices. This is the party that gave us a carbon tax that went through to the power points of every home and every business in Australia. This is the government that gave us a carbon tax that means that the pensioners in my electorate now in wintertime stay in bed all day because they cannot turn on their heaters. This is the party that organised a mining tax that generated no income and then spent the income it did not generate and plunged the economy further into debt. This is the party that, in 2008, changed the border protection policy.

I can remember sitting here in 2008—as is my lot in life I was probably sitting in this very spot in 2008; I have not gone very far—and listening to the speeches from the then government side talking about how it was changing the way that we were going to handle illegal migrants. Since that time, we have had over 1,000 deaths and 50,000 people turn up unannounced on our doors. I can still remember that day. There are some days that are imprinted in my memory. That was the day that the government changed a policy that worked into a policy that was a disaster, with the amount of grief, heartache, anxiety and pain that it caused. This is the party that is trying to lecture this government about the right choices.

We have made some strong choices in the last six or so months. Despite the fact that we are getting opposition in the Senate, we have made the choice to scrap the world's biggest carbon tax. We are scrapping the mining tax and we are fixing the budget, which was in an endless spiral downhill. We are going to make the tough decisions that are needed to get this country back on track. This, indeed, is a daunting task, but it is one that we are up for. Our Prime Minister has shown incredible leadership. He has not chosen to take the populist path of the three previous prime ministers; he has shown strong leadership, he has shown restraint, he has shown dignity and he has shown that, indeed, he is a statesman in guiding this country back on track.

In a bit over a week's time, the people of Western Australia have to make a choice. They have to make a choice in their half-Senate election as to whether they want to support the chaos that is the opposition side. Will they support the candidates from this little fairyland that sits up behind me? Will they support the candidate from the Palmer United Party? Clive Palmer has shown that he is the biggest distraction in Canberra but is completely irrelevant to what goes on in this place. The people in Western Australia have a choice to make. Do they want stable government? Do they want a Senate that is going to scrap the carbon tax and scrap the mining tax? Supporting the Roads to Recovery program would be a nice start from those opposite. Are we going to get a Senate on 1 July with Western Australian senators that can actually govern for the country and not for some ginger group, as we are seeing?

I suggest that the people in Western Australia should look at the coalition ticket—at the Liberal ticket and, particularly, at the National ticket. If they want to vote for the National Party, they should think of Shane Van Styn. Shane Van Styn would be a wonderful advocate for Western Australia in this place. Shane Van Styn will not be playing stunts out on the front lawn with these people behind me. Shane Van Styn will not be bound to the ginger groups from the left, as the opposition is. Shane Van Styn will bring strong representation from the west and get our country back on track.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on today's matter of public importance:

The Abbott Government’s failure to make the right choices and pursue the right priorities for Australia’s future.

Yes, we have seen the government time and time again prove that their priorities are in the wrong place. The list is long—way too long for the five minutes I have today—so let's just focus on a few. Just this week, of course, we saw the infamous knights and dames announcement. This came off the back of the $75,000 gold-plated paid parental leave scheme that the Prime Minister announced, albeit not necessarily with his cabinet's support; the cutting of funding and access to our local schools; and, of course, the giving of a green light to bigotry in Australia through changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. And that is just for this week.

On the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, I think it is worth quoting an article from The Age today. I believe my colleague the member for Rankin made reference to it earlier. Quoted in the article is an unnamed source that was, however, clearly identified as a government minister, reflecting on the Attorney-General's controversial changes to the race hate laws. He says:

George has really drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid.

And I would suggest the Kool-Aid has been pretty free flowing from the taps in the offices of those opposite.

It is the only way that I can explain some of their decisions. Honestly, does the government think that the Australian people want their elected representatives to be hiding 900 pages of deep cuts from the public? We know that the Commission of Audit has been sitting on the desk of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer for nearly six weeks, but the public—particularly the voters of Western Australia—have absolutely no idea what is in store for them. Does this government think that the Australian people want their representatives to provide extravagant rewards for a small segment of the community as part of the gold-plated paid parental leave scheme at the expense of providing shelter and services for the homeless in our communities? Does this government think that the Australian people want a government to slap a new tax on them every time they go to see their GP, making health care less and less accessible and undoing the universality of Medicare—the quintessential goal of every Liberal government that has ever sat in this House?

Do they think that the Australian people want representatives to strip away funding from infrastructure projects? We have already seen the government cut half a billion dollars from infrastructure projects in Western Australia. Do the government really think that the Australian people want a Treasurer and a government prepared to cynically manipulate the budget in order to create a distorted picture of the state of the budget in order to justify their severe cuts to essential services?

Independent advice from the Parliamentary Budget Office has shown that the decision by the government to ditch the previous government's fiscal rules dramatically inflated the level of net debt by an incredible $260 billion—and, as we heard time and time again today, $68 billion of that is in this term of this government alone. It is absolutely this Treasurer's own problem. It is his spending priorities and his changed economic assumptions that have added $68 billion of new debt—doubling the deficit under this Treasurer's watch. There is no-one else to blame; that is his doing.

So here we are with dramatic inflation of the state of the budget, which buys into the government rhetoric of requiring massive ideological cuts in the upcoming budget. We have already had some warning bells ringing about needing to scale back the alleged unaffordability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme—a scheme which this government assured us had bipartisan support. But everyone is fearful that this softening up of the unaffordability of this scheme is in fact paving the way for it to be scaled back. In my electorate of Newcastle, which is a national launch site, this is a major issue and it is very stressful for carers and families in the region.

And what about this trumped up 'repeal day'? It is nothing more than a distraction from cuts to protections for seniors, consumers, workers and investors. What about jobs? This government has no plan to save Australian jobs or to save Australian industry. It is a government willing to sit back and watch the ship-building industry in my electorate and many others go the same way as the automotive industry.

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a shame. It is time that this government got itself together and started focusing on the issues important to the people of Australia. We want a plan for Australian jobs. We want a plan for Australian industry. We want a plan for a future—not looking back.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that I am really delighted to be able to speak on this matter of public importance, which focuses on the right priorities and the right choices for Australia's future. I find it pretty extraordinary that those opposite would dare to come into this place and try to suggest that somehow we on this side of the parliament are not facing up to the right priorities and the right future for this country. It takes a particular front. As my mother would say, 'They have more front than Myer.' I will give you a couple of examples as to how this is so.

If you cast your minds back to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP-Greens government over their six years, you will note that their priorities were on spin, not substance. Let me take you to their focus, the thing that they lauded that they would do in government—tax reform. They said that they were going to have the most comprehensive tax reform that this nation has ever seen and they appointed Ken Henry for this task. It cost $10 million, we saw 123 recommendations and they sat on that report for more than four months. So what happened? Well, not very much. Less than a handful of those recommendations were adopted. Instead, what they did—these people who proclaimed that they were going to reform the tax system—was bring in one large tax, in the carbon tax, and one not so large tax, in the mining tax.

Let me take you to the carbon tax. They promised not to bring in a carbon tax. Before the election, they promised not to do it and they brought it in after the election—a $9 billion a year tax; a $9 billion a year hit on business and households. On average, Australian households will be paying $550 more because of this tax. Shame on those opposite, who would increase the cost of living for Australians—Australians who are trying to do their best and work hard and provide for their families.

What about the mining tax? There were five different versions. They got out the white-out and the sticky tape and they put it all together—and what did they come up with? They came up with a mining tax which, really, on a good day is going to raise around $300 million; yet they had spent against this mining tax more than $13 billion. Those opposite simply cannot add up. The figures do not match. This is why we have such a budget problem—a budget problem that we have inherited, that we will need to repair come May.

Our priority of course in this place has been to cut both in government—to cut the carbon tax and to cut the mining tax. We were successful in this House. No thanks to those opposite, we did pass legislation to cut the mining tax and to cut carbon tax. But what happened in the Senate? In the Senate we were not successful, because we were blocked. We were blocked by the Labor Party on our priorities. We were blocked by the Greens—their coalition partners—because they did not accept the mandate that we were given at the Australian election to get rid of both of these taxes that are a huge impost on this country.

So we are trying, but we have seen from the Labor Party that their priority is not to do what the Australian people have asked them to do. Their priority in this place has been to play games. We saw no better example today than their attack on the Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop—a fine Speaker. Their attack on Bronwyn Bishop in this place today will go down in history—go down in infamy—because of their priorities to wreck and to distract.

In the remaining 30 seconds that I have here I want to say that we have been successful in so many ways in being able to do the things that need to be done for this country. We are compassionate towards asylum seekers. That is why we do not want to see more asylum seekers die on the journey, at sea. That is why we have brought into place Operation Sovereign Borders. We have brought in Operation Sovereign Borders and, as Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission, said, no people have died at sea on our watch, because we have stopped the boats. In 98 days that is what we have done.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the Leader of the Opposition said in his great speech yesterday, a government's priorities can determine whether people are the victims of change or its beneficiaries. That is why the choices the government must make in its upcoming budget are so important. The Abbott government's failure to make the right choices and pursue the right priorities for Australia's future is a matter of great public importance.

Only a government with twisted priorities would be spending time and energy establishing knighthoods when it should be working on improving education for this country's future. Only a government with twisted priorities would set up a $5.5 billion Paid Parental Leave scheme when it should be making quality child care accessible and affordable. Instead we are talking about a $5.5 billion Paid Parental Leave scheme that will give women on high incomes, parents on high incomes $75,000 each when they have a child—that is, $75,000 for a single individual under this $5.5 billion Paid Parental Leave scheme. It is a twisted priority. Only a government with twisted priorities would devote resources to remove protections from hate speech, when it should be addressing community concerns about funding for services. Only a government with twisted priorities would set up a slush fund to pay polluters, when it should be introducing an ETS. Only a government with twisted priorities would spend its time trying to work out how to wind back consumer protections, when it should be trying to work out a plan for jobs in this country. Last week the Prime Minister said:

… regulatory burdens around what are ethical givens are, I think, a classic case of regulatory overkill.

He was talking about the obligation to act in the best interests of clients of financial planners. I do not think that is overkill. Consumer protection is more important than ever. This week is the anniversary of the liquidation of Storm Financial—a sobering reminder of the need for regulation and protection. We know that retirees and mum and dad investors are burnt by the failure to provide consumer protections. I also know about that from being a Queenslander. And I know that, like Queenslanders, Western Australians understand the need for consumer protection laws.

The collapse of Westpoint led to $388 million in losses to investors. The Abbott government's retreat this week from removing consumer protections is a positive thing for our community. But let us hope this is not just a stopgap to avoid further scrutiny in the lead-up to the Western Australian Senate by-election. The retreat on this issue should give this government an opportunity to reflect on its twisted priorities. Like many in this place, and like my community on the south side of Brisbane, I am dismayed at the Abbott government's choices and its failure to work out what the real priorities are for this country. This government said that it would create one million jobs, but when you look at the actions of this government, you see that jobs are not their priority. Since this government has been elected, we have seen 60,000 full-time jobs being lost—that is, 5,000 jobs lost at Qantas; 2,500 direct jobs lost at Toyota; 2,900 direct jobs lost at Holden; 1,100 Rio Tinto jobs lost up at Gove; 544 jobs lost at Electrolux in Orange; 110 jobs lost at Simplot; more than 200 jobs at Peabody; 200 jobs at Caterpillar; and many other indirect jobs have been lost. Sadly, we know there will be more indirect job losses as a consequence.

If jobs were a priority for this government, why has it turned its back on providing support for training the future workforce of this country? Mr Abbott has already broken his promise that there would be no cuts to education by cutting $1 billion from the trades training centres. We have not even seen what Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey have in store for this country under the 'commission of cuts'. The government has had the Commission of Audit report for a very long time, since just before the Griffith by-elections. I am very concerned that the record reflects that the government had that Commission of Audit report before that by-election. Did it release the cuts before that by-election? No, the government did not. Will it release the cuts before the Western Australian Senate by-election? This is the chance that the government has to, at least in part, make up to Australian voters for its failure to tell voters before the Griffith by-elections what cuts it was considering. Why does the Abbott government not now tell Western Australian voters what cuts it is considering in the Commission of Audit? Why does it not come clean with the Western Australian voters?

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to dispel any notion that the Abbott government is not implementing the right priorities for Australia. The Prime Minister, as leader of the coalition, took a very clear plan to the election last year and he is now getting on with the job. Our plan included building a stronger economy so that everyone can get ahead, abolishing the carbon tax, ending the waste, stopping the boats and building the roads of the 21st century. These key issues were and are important to all Australians.

If we look at what the coalition inherited from Labor's gross incompetence, we can see that the coalition has taken on an enormous responsibility in fixing Labor's mess. Labor's legacy to Australia is: 200,000 more unemployed, gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion, $123 billion in cumulative deficits, more than 50,000 illegal arrivals by boat and the world's biggest carbon tax.

If we break down each of the points in the coalition's plan to fix this mess, we can see that at every step Labor has blocked the legislation introduced by the coalition. This legislation included repealing the carbon tax, repealing the mining tax, temporary protection visas to stop the boats and building vital infrastructure that Australia needs, with particular reference to the Roads to Recovery program. I will deal with these on a point by point basis.

The government introduced and passed legislation in the House to abolish the carbon tax, which will save the average Western Australian family $550 on their power bills and up to 10 per cent on the cost of electricity for small business. The legislation is currently being blocked in the Senate by the Labor Party and their Green allies. In Western Australia, ALP Senate No. 1 candidate Joe Bullock declared that the Labor Party would be scrapping the carbon tax, yet on the same day, here in Canberra, the Labor Party voted to block it.

Repealing the mining tax: the government introduced and passed legislation to abolish the mining tax. My electorate of O'Connor has numerous mining and resources companies that are critically important to the economy of the region, the state and the nation. This mining tax has destroyed the confidence in the capital markets and seen greenfields exploration come to a virtual halt. This is a tax on investment and jobs. It is an anti-Western Australia tax. This legislation is currently being blocked in the Senate by the Labor Party and their Green allies, threatening Australia's economy.

When it comes to stopping the boats, the coalition promised in last year's election that we would stop the boats, and we have. Operation Sovereign Borders has seen a dramatic reduction in asylum seekers coming to Australia. It has been 98 days since a boat successfully arrived on our shores. In the last four months of the Rudd and Gillard governments, 174 boats with 12,603 asylum seekers arrived. Yet still the Labor Party block our efforts to re-introduce temporary protection visas in the Senate.

Building the vital infrastructure that Australia needs: this government is delivering the biggest infrastructure agenda in Australia's history with the $35.5 billion Infrastructure Investment Program that will build the vital road and rail projects to improve efficiency, boost productivity and drive Australia's economy forward. In this program there is a commitment to the Roads to Recovery Program, locking in its future for a further five years with $1.75 billion of funding. I have spoken this week about the importance of the Roads to Recovery Program because it provides vital funding to local governments for the maintenance of the nation's local road infrastructure. However, this too is in jeopardy because the opposition has vowed to block it in the Senate. In my electorate alone, if Labor continues to block this program, $18 million worth of investments in vital roads will be lost.

In WA the Abbott government has made a major investment in road projects, including $308 million for the Great Northern Highway, $686 million for Gateway WA, $615 million for the Swan Valley bypass, $140 million for the Tonkin Highway upgrade, $174 million for the North West Coastal Highway and $42 million for the Great Eastern Highway in my electorate between Coolgardie and Bullabulling. The coalition is so committed to these plans that, despite the revenue from the mining tax not appearing, these projects will go ahead. This is once again an example of the coalition fixing Labor's mess.

Finally, I want to say to the people of Western Australia that we have a great opportunity on 5 April to return three Liberal senators to help the coalition get its legislation through the Senate and allow this government to deliver the plan we took to the people and get on with building the economy of this nation and, more particularly, Western Australia.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.