Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

All seven, Senator Ronaldson. Every time there is a Labor government it leaves the country in more debt. It has been the same since John Christian Watson in 1903 right through to Paul Keating, and it will be the same this time. The one thing we know about this government is that whoever the leader is—I do not care whether it is Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Bill Shorten or Greg Combet—it will leave this country in more debt because that is the historical legacy of the Australian Labor Party and it has never changed in 110 years. It is a perfect record. Every time there is a Labor government there is further debt.

The Gillard government is heading the same way. You cannot even argue that somehow this is nation building. What were the government’s two most recent nation-building attempts? One I recall is the pink batts scheme. What a shambles that was—it cost billions as well. The Auditor-General said that nearly 30 per cent of 13,800 houses inspected as of March 2010 had problems ranging up to ‘serious safety concerns’. That meant that over 300,000 home owners have potentially been left exposed to serious risk in their own homes. What a great scheme! It found that the government was warned about the problems concerning quality, fire, safety, fraud and internal capacity before the commencement of the program, but despite the warnings there were still four deaths, nearly 200 house fires and many, many scams and dodgy installations. It is true, and I accept and I think my colleagues do, that Mr Garrett was not to blame. I do not blame Mr Garrett. Who was calling the shots? Mr Rudd was, from the Lodge. He was to blame for this—parliament’s friend—probably the worst Prime Minister since World War II. At least Mr Whitlam—he may have been a fiscal incompetent—believed in something. Mr Rudd believes in nothing, except Mr Rudd.

The second great nation-building program was the Building the Education Revolution. Mr Acting Deputy President, you will recall that. You might recall too, sir, it cost about $16 billion. The question you want to ask is: how could you spend $16 billion and have so many people be so unhappy? How could you possibly do that? The government did it—and do you know why there are so many people unhappy? Because the federal government let state governments build school halls for state schools. That was the grotesque and expensive failure of this government. Sure, some people liked it. My old friend Senator Carr loved it. He loves the state planning, and the old Stalinism was also apparently attractive—he loves all that. But what happened? In the end those poor schools that wanted a library got a gymnasium and those that wanted a gymnasium got a library.