Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow Senator Lundy, because, in order to respond to her comments, you look in vain to find any powerful points that she has made against the government. What we are seeing, of course, is a classic case of Labor sour grapes. Labor’s election approach is now completely unravelling. We know that with the climate change issue the Labor Party have fallen over a very big hurdle with their targets, which cannot be sustained without doing massive damage to the Australian economy. We know that the centrepiece of the economic strategy—the productivity approach led by Mr Rudd—has fallen over because it has become very clear that Mr Rudd himself knows nothing about the issues of productivity and the Australian economy.

Finally, with the announcement of the broadband rollout, we find that the Labor Party is now struggling to catch up with the government’s approach. By every measure, the Labor Party’s policy on broadband is grossly inferior to the policy outlined by the Prime Minister in his press conference yesterday. I was intrigued to listen to Senator Lundy and her attack on the WiMAX technology. It is a great pity that Senator Lundy’s speech is not being heard in the US. My understanding is that WiMAX is being rolled out to some 100 million homes in the US, but they did not have the advantage, unfortunately, of the advice from Senator Lundy, which I am sure would not have changed their opinion one iota.

What we are seeing is the classic approach by the Labor Party. They never want to discuss policies; they want to play the man. This is exactly what we are seeing across a wide range of areas with the Labor Party’s approach as we go to the next election. There are very significant policy issues that have to be debated in the Australian community. The government is very proud of its broadband policy. A great deal of work has been put into the development of this policy on broadband, which will be rolled out to 99 per cent of Australian homes. This is in contrast—and I am being generous to the Labor Party’s broadband policy—to a rollout to some 75 per cent of Australian homes. Of course, we have been able to do this without the massive raid on the public purse which the Labor Party has proposed.

What we are seeing as we are moving towards the winter break is that the Labor Party are finding that their policies on climate change are under acute attack—and correctly so—because of the damage they will do to the economy. We are finding the productivity approach of Mr Rudd unwinding simply because of the incredible ignorance of Mr Rudd on key features of his own policy and key features of how the Australian economy works. And we are seeing this precisely in relation to the matter of broadband.

As to the paucity of the Labor Party policy, those who do not believe me should listen to the astonishing interview that was given by Joel Fitzgibbon, the Labor Party shadow defence minister. He finally told the truth—I do not say that he did that deliberately—about the Labor Party’s broadband proposal. He revealed that it is ‘yet to be tested’. It has ‘no technical backing’ and cannot reach anywhere near the levels of the population in the proposal announced by the Prime Minister yesterday. The fact is that the Labor Party approach on broadband is grossly inferior to the approach that was revealed by the government.

Now that the Labor Party is trying to catch up what does Senator Lundy do? Senator Lundy gets herself into a great lather and attacks the government and personally attacks Senator Coonan, which I thought was most unfortunate and shows a complete unwillingness, in my opinion, to debate the substantive issues which are before us. But I can make this prediction: as we go towards the next election, the personal attacks on the Prime Minister and on the frontbenchers of the Liberal Party will increase. We are seeing this day after day in question time. The personal attacks on Senator Coonan were unfortunately continued in the contribution made by Senator Lundy. The fact of the matter is the Australian public want a substantive policy debate. They want real issues to be debated, and the Labor Party— (Time expired)