Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the previous speaker, Senator Webber, on that very important contribution to allow me time to gather my thoughts. I understood there was to be somebody speaking before me on these appropriation bills, but it is nice to see that priority has been given to the government representative.

The speech given by the Governor-General on 12 February 2008 at the opening of parliament was truly remarkable. It was a speech which reflected the hopes and aspirations of the millions of Australians who elected the Rudd Labor government—such an emphatic victory—on 24 November last year. At the beginning of his speech the Governor-General said:

On 24 November 2007, Australians voted to elect a new government.

As one of the world’s oldest democracies, it is easy for us to take elections for granted and to fail to appreciate how fortunate we are to live in a nation where governments change hands peacefully as a result of the free expression of the will of the people.

We have just witnessed a change of government, an event that has happened on just six occasions in the past 60 years.

Regardless of any partisan affiliation, all Australians can celebrate the success of our democracy when such changes can occur so seamlessly and with such goodwill.

Those words of the Governor-General are very apt. We are fortunate to live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous nations of the world. We can change governments at the ballot box without incurring the sorts of situations that have occurred in a number of countries around the world in recent years and have done so for many years. I am going to come back to that theme later in my speech.

On 23 November, the day before the election, despite the prosperity that this country should have been enjoying and some were enjoying as a result of the minerals resources boom, housing was the least affordable it had ever been, inflation was at a 16-year high, Australia had not signed the Kyoto protocol, the federal parliament had not apologised to the Indigenous Australians for the stolen generations and for past wrongs done to them and working families were faced with Work Choices industrial legislation—a system which stripped many employees of long-held protections and entitlements. Without wanting to labour the point, almost all of the current members of the coalition leadership team and shadow ministry were members of the government that let that build up. Even though John Howard is no longer a member of the parliament, having lost his seat, the record of the Howard government is also the record of Brendan Nelson, the current Leader of the Opposition. It is the record of Julie Bishop, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. It is the record of Senator Nick Minchin, who was Leader of the Government in the Senate in the previous parliament. It is the record of Malcolm Turnbull, the now shadow Treasurer and a minister in the former government. I could go on and on. These are the same people who sat in the last parliament and cheered so loudly when the Work Choices legislation was passed by parliament.

That legislation was the realisation of John Howard’s dream, and I have spoken about this before. I can recall when John Howard was shadow minister for industrial relations many years ago when the Hawke and Keating governments were in power. I have to say, he never made any pretence about it. He always believed that, if he ever got into power and got control of both houses of parliament, he was going to dismantle as far as possible the system of industrial award protection and industrial justice in this country. He also had two other objectives. One was to introduce a goods and services tax and the other was to privatise just about anything that the government owned or operated. He had many other agendas, but those three in particular were the most important. It is a fact that he pretty much achieved each of those.

Of course, his crowning glory, or so he and his supporters and fellow ministers such as Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott thought, was getting the Work Choices legislation through the parliament. They all thought that was their greatest achievement. How wrong they were. One of the great tragedies of the previous government’s time in office is not only that that legislation proceeded to hurt ordinary working Australians and their families but that the government at the time never understood what was happening or they were prepared to ignore what was happening. They blindly went on running advertising campaigns costing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince the Australian public and indeed themselves that somehow Work Choices was a good thing.

Whilst we have seen the commencement of the dismantling of Work Choices this week with the legislation that was passed regarding AWAs, the only virtue in this for the opposition is that they were humiliated in the last election and consequently had to support the repeal of this terrible legislation. They did not want to, of course. They did not want to accept the verdict of the people on Work Choices. They wanted to continue on and oppose this, as we know. Wiser political heads in the opposition prevailed, but in their heart of hearts I think they still wanted to see it continue.

The Governor-General’s speech outlining the agenda of the Rudd government was an affirmation of the Australian people’s faith in electing the Rudd Labor government last November. From day one, we started doing the things we had promised to do—such as repealing Work Choices and signing the Kyoto declaration. The very first act of the Rudd Labor government was to sign the Kyoto protocol. That was a single administrative act of the new Labor government that was applauded around the world.

Yet we had Mr Howard, only the second Prime Minister in the history of the country to lose his seat, over in the United States last week or the week before making speeches condemning the Rudd Labor government for implementing what it promised the Australian people at the election.