Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thought it was deja vu when I went back to my office and heard the same speech from Senator Macdonald. Obviously I did not make my position too clear. The same speech came out and it was so laced with hyperbole and hypocrisy that it was unbelievable. I did not hear Senator Macdonald deal with any of the issues that I raised about the Auditor-General and the rorts under the previous coalition govern­ment in relation to Work Choices advertising—$150 million. I did not hear any response to that. Do you know why? There is no response to that. The coalition who are in here complaining about government advertising are the world champions of using public money for advertising. And they were not even advertising a decent policy. As I indicated before, it was advertising a policy to rip away the rights, rip away the conditions and rip away the wages of ordinary workers in this country. So, if coalition members are going to stand up in here and argue that the hypocrisy is on the government's side, they will have to address the hypocrisy in the $150 million that they spent on Work Choices—$150 million of taxpayers' money to try and convince people that Work Choices was a good policy. The Howard government were judged on that sort of expenditure, and the judgement of the Australian public was that they could not be trusted to look after workers rights in this country.

Then we have the bleating support for Peter Costello. I have to say that what is being built up around Peter Costello is a myth—