Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers by Senator Conroy to Senator Brandis. This is all about Labor being not able to control its waste. It has taken the appointment of a Liberal to address Labor’s waste and mismanagement of precious taxpayers’ dollars. If it has to do that for the disaster recovery process, why not keep going? Why not appoint Liberals to control waste in other portfolios? By putting in place this body to oversee flood and storm spending, Labor has accepted that the public does not believe that they can be trusted with money. You do not need a second bureaucracy to ensure the first bureaucracy spends money wisely. The fact that the government has resorted to going down this path shows that it cannot be trusted.

Senator Abetz referred to some of the debacles in government. You only have to look at the debacle with Fuelwatch, the debacle with childcare centres, the great big mining tax and the GP superclinics. In estimates, the officials told us that there was no criteria. When we pressed them and asked what criteria they used to determine where they would put the GP superclinics—blank, no answer. What the government did was pretty obvious. Now it has come out that the political process was to put the superclinics in its marginal seats. Of course, we knew that at the time but finally it has come out. It is little wonder that it has gone down that process.

Following on from Senator Abetz’s comments, the appointment of John Fahey is a good one. I had the privilege to work for John, when he was Premier, as his senior private secretary from 1993 to 1994 at a time when it was very difficult in minority government in New South Wales. They were difficult times and Mr Fahey certainly had to deal with a lot of problems on a daily basis. I know that he brings good experience and will be well placed, no doubt, to attack the many problems and the many issues that he is going to uncover about Labor’s messes.

But let us look at potential alternatives to Mr Fahey. I went back and looked at the former Labor finance ministers—I notice that we went to a Liberal finance minister as opposed to the Labor ranks. We had Mr John Dawkins, who was Treasurer in the Keating Labor government for a couple of years; we had Ralph Willis, a former finance minister; we had Lindsay Tanner, but I think the wounds are still too raw for Mr Tanner to have been considered. Of course there was Peter Walsh. I went back and got a copy of Peter Walsh’s book Confessions of a Failed Finance Ministerobviously that is a difficulty that finance ministers have. I found this very interesting quote, which probably explains why the government did not appoint one of its own. He talks about his endorsement for the Senate and he states:

The simple country boy I then was believed that ministers in the Labor government must be more competent and astute than I could ever hope to be. Eventually that belief changed.

Some of the reasons can be found in the following chapters. His book makes very interesting reading.

When you look at Minister Wong—and Senator Moore takes exception because we are attacking the minister—the last time I looked at her responsibilities they included government financial accountability, governance and financial management frameworks, including procurement policy and services. That is interesting because when you look at the role that Mr Fahey now has to exercise, it is funny that he seems to have had subcontracted to him the very work that Minister Wong herself should be doing. That is what this is really all about—the incompetence of this minister. The government is so incompetent that it cannot do it in-house. It has to subcontract it out. We have Minister Conroy lauding that there are going to be other people who will be involved in this process. He had the audacity to refer to Mr Orgill. How much did he learn after he told us that we got value for money in the BER wasteful and disgraceful program?