Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It's good to be here with you and with that champion of free speech over there, the member for Goldstein. Of course, the government didn't want this sitting, did they. They cancelled the parliament until August, but even they realised that, with school going back and rugby going back, they couldn't get away with not having the parliament come back. But these three days are a sham. This chamber here sat for zero hours yesterday. The government has cut the number of hours for debate. We're lucky to get two today. If we have a really good day out we might get three hours to debate things tomorrow.

We're in the middle of the biggest crisis for decades—the biggest, fastest economic collapse that this country has ever seen. The national parliament gathers, but the government won't even allow a debate on the economy. They won't allow a debate in this chamber on the Treasurer's vacuous, content-free, slogan-ridden 'economic statement' yesterday. If you're lucky you might get 90 seconds. That's what our citizens expect, is it? We come here for 90 seconds of fatuous nonsense! God forbid a real debate here.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I've got five minutes. I got five minutes. I got told about this about an hour ago.

Democracy is not a tick-a-box system. It's not something where you fill out a form and set-and-forget every three years. It requires real, informed debate in communities, in the media, in councils, in states and also here in the national parliament. It's important, if you believe in democracy—these free speech champions over there in the government—that you actually let alternative debates be aired. Why won't the government refer their own Economic Statement here so we can talk about it—have every member of parliament come in and put their words on the record about what they think about the future of the economy and the country and be held to account for their words and have a chance to raise the issues in our community, like the queues of people who can't get any food vouchers because the government's emergency relief programs don't work in my community? We should be allowed to come in here and talk about that—every member, not just those lucky enough to land a couple of minute slots.

The conservatives claim to be champions of free speech. You've seen them out there railing against communist China, beating their chests: the member for Canning, the zealot-in-chief of the government; the populist buffoon, the member for Dawson, the 'member for Manila'—they're no better. They shut down and dodge debate. There's no sitting calendar. There's no commitment we're going to be back here any time before August. They cut back the sitting hours. And they're too scared to let people debate their own economic statement.

I was talking to one of my colleagues, the Manager of Opposition Business, and I said: 'Are they that scared of what we've got to say?' And he said: 'No,' in his wise voice, 'they're scared of what their own backbenchers will get up and say if they're allowed a free debate, given what you hear coming out of their party room.' The Liberal Party is divided. The conservative wing doesn't agree with doubling jobseeker, do they? They spent the last 6½ years in government making people live in poverty on $40 a day, but even the Liberal Party realised it wasn't going to cut it to let a million middle-class Australians turn up to Centrelink, find it had all been outsourced and discover the reality of life on $40 a day. Even they weren't stupid enough to think they'd get away with that! The conservatives are horrified at JobKeeper. We had the member for Mackellar saying it just needs to snap back—we just need to get rid of it, shove everyone back on the dole queue and then cut that back in half. They might've called out the rorts in JobKeeper or called out the rorts in the superannuation program. They might've discovered that the member for Hughes is now a socialist and thinks JobKeeper should go everywhere—that's unexpected.

I'm worried we might hear the old lines about 'debt and deficit'. We haven't heard them for a while, have we! It was lovely turning up to question time without these idiotic lectures about debt and deficit. Given you've had seven years in government, have doubled the debt and now are on the way to doubling it again, we're not going to hear much about that anymore, are we? We might have heard about company tax cuts—the old trickle-down economics. They're going to get that one out again. That's really going to get the economy going—sending a whole bunch of foreign dividends overseas!

We should be allowed to debate your economic statement. Government members should be in here, allowed to debate the economic statement. It was utterly content-free. It's not often I find myself agreeing with Adam Creighton—the member for Goldstein's former housemate, I heard!—but in The Australianhe said the speech was a political not an economic document. And then the Commonwealth Bank economist said:

The standout feature of the Treasurer's economic statement was that it contained no new information.

It was all key messages and missed opportunities.

Overall, the response of course is a huge victory for Labor. We called for the wage subsidy. One hundred and sixty thousand Australians went onto the unemployed queue in the time it took you to put the wage subsidy in place. That's a debate for another day.

There's an insane glee over there at the collapse in revenue in the higher education sector and the looming cuts to research. Government members—including you two opposite, who, I know, believe in this stuff: you should be up here arguing for money to go into research, not silenced, reading out your nonsense dot points. We should be able to have a debate about the economy in reasoned terms and have every member come in here and state their views.