Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate censure the Government for four years of broken promises, economic mismanagement, wasteful spending, lies, hypocrisy and policy back flips, secret deals, leadership intrigue and incompetence, all of which has eroded the living standards of Australians and their confidence in the Government.

Never before in our nation's history have the Australian people been inflicted with a government that has been so incompetent, so wasteful and so deceptive. The last four years have seen the Australian people suffer a surge in their cost of living at the hands of this incompetent, wasteful and deceptive government. The litany of incompetence, waste and deceit is lengthy. Think Fuelwatch; GROCERYchoice; Senator Carr's classic, cash for clunkers; pink batts; and the Building the Education Revolution. Remember the East Timor solution and the Malaysian solution. Above all, who will ever forget the promise: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'? That was the grossest betrayal of a mandate, the grossest betrayal of an election promise and the grossest betrayal of working families—remember that slogan—ever perpetrated on the Australian people. For the coalition, working families are in fact our constituents, the people whom we on this side actually seek to serve, not just a glib slogan cynically developed by a focus group to win an election by the Australian Labor Party.

Working families of Australia were cruelly hoaxed by the Australian Labor Party. Having promised lower petrol prices, they delivered—sorry, they did not; they tried—Fuelwatch and they themselves dumped it, knowing it was a promise that would not deliver lower petrol prices. Having promised lower grocery prices to the Australian people, they developed GROCERYchoice. Remember that wonderful, wonderful scheme whereby Australians could go onto the internet and do a price comparison? In my home state of Tasmania, people were able to compare the prices in a shop in Strahan and one in Swansea. The fact is that Strahan is on the extreme west coast of Tasmania, Swansea on the extreme east coast. Of course, with the failure of Fuelwatch they would never have been able to afford to drive from Strahan to Swansea for cheaper groceries, if they were in fact available there. It was another cruel hoax perpetrated on the people of Australia—promising them lower grocery prices and delivering them nothing in return other than the waste of millions of dollars in developing a scheme that was as good as cash for clunkers. This is a three-part betrayal of our fellow Australians on their cost of living. They receive higher petrol prices instead of the lower petrol prices they were promised. They have been delivered higher grocery prices when they were promised lower grocery prices. They were promised no carbon tax and, as a result, lower electricity prices but they will now be delivered higher power prices.

This is a government that won office on a promise of—remember?—fixing the public hospital system. If they had not signed up by a certain date, Mr Rudd and the Australian Labor Party were going to take them over. Where has that promise gone? Our public hospital system is in greater disarray than ever, waiting lists have ballooned out, all courtesy of this government making huge promises and being unable to deliver on them because they have perpetrated a cruel hoax on the Australian people.

This is a government that won office on a promise of balancing the budget. Remember? They were self-described economic conservatives, and budget surpluses were going to be in their DNA. They have never delivered a budget surplus. All they have delivered is ever-growing and burgeoning debt burdens, ever-growing budget deficits, both of which are impacting on the cost of living. Indeed today, on this day, the Australian people, courtesy of the Greens-Labor alliance, will be accruing another $100 million of government debt because of the government's incompetence and their waste.

This is a government that won in 2007 on a promise of turning back the boats. Remember that—Mr Rudd proudly saying, 'We can turn back the boats and we will because we are a tough government'? As soon as they got into government, to whom did they give the portfolio but the hapless Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Evans. What did we have? Not a single boat turned back; a huge flood of boats into this country, which has seen our border protection policy mocked around the world and a huge blow-out. And when I say 'a huge blow-out', I am not talking thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars; I am talking thousands of millions of dollars being incurred by the Australian taxpayer because of this undeniable policy failure—a policy failure where they promised one thing before the election and then did another.

Of course, that was Mr Rudd's great promise on border protection. Then we had the rock-solid guarantee that the wonderful Ms Gillard with all her foreign affairs finesse had been able to negotiate—I wonder if the Labor Party remember this one?—the East Timor solution. Remember the East Timor solution? Just in time for the 2010 election it was, 'We will protect Australian borders with the East Timor solution,' in circumstances where she knew, where she must have known, that that was not a deal, was not likely to occur and would never occur. But what else could we expect from a Prime Minister who is willing to swear undying loyalty to her predecessor and then stab him in the back, a Prime Minister who is willing to stare down the barrel of a TV camera and promise the Australian people: 'There will be no carbon tax.' There is no sense of boundaries for this Prime Minister. She will say anything and do anything to win power and to stay in power, so it was not too far to go to simply make another false promise that there was an East Timor solution in the wind.

What about the government that promised they could deliver a national broadband network to the Australian people for $4 billion and cover 90 per cent of the Australian population in doing so? After they won government, all of a sudden the NBN cost increased tenfold to over $40 billion to cover 10 per cent less of the population than they had promised—another broken promise, another falsehood and another cruel hoax perpetrated on the working families of Australia, a slogan that they have now absolutely run away from like they appear to have run away from their former leader Mr Rudd. This is a government that lied by promising 'no carbon tax', a toxic tax which will hurt every Australian. Make no mistake—in hurting every Australian, it will also hurt the environment. The best example of that is Coogee Chemicals, a company which wanted to start up not only in Australia but in the Prime Minister's own electorate. Coogee Chemicals offered the promise of 150 jobs, the promise of $1 billion worth of investment to establish the biggest methanol plant in the Southern Hemisphere. It would have earned Australia $14 billion worth of export income. They have now decided, on the back of the carbon tax, not to establish in Australia—and where are they going? China. In establishing in China, their carbon dioxide emissions will be four times greater than they would have been in a pre-carbon tax Australia. That is why we on this side say the government is incompetent, wasteful and deceitful.

We know that in Coogee Chemicals we have only one of many future examples where investment will not come to Australia and where jobs will be denied to Australians. What is more, the carbon footprint in the world will be made worse, exactly as the European experience has been. You see their aluminium smelters deserting Europe and going to Africa. Does anybody in the Green-Labor alliance honestly believe that environmental standards in Africa are better than they were in Europe before they closed shop? Of course not. That is why we are now getting report after report out of the European Union telling us that the carbon price is a disaster and has made no difference, zero difference, to the carbon dioxide emissions of the European Union.

Countries such as the United States, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand have all come to this conclusion—and what policies are they adopting? They are adopting a better way. They are adopting a direct action plan, a direct action plan such as the one the coalition took to the last election. It is a policy which will deliver what the Australian people want without the need for this toxic tax.

We were also promised that the Labor Party would not engage in the blame game. What did the Leader of the Government in the Senate start his answer off with just a few minutes ago, when Senator Brandis asked the question about increased cost of living for Australians? He immediately blamed the states—in direct conflict with the great promise: 'We will never play the blame game; we will not blame the states.'

What other promises did they take to the election? They promised a government of transparency. Remember Operation Sunlight? 'We will allow the sun to shine in,' they said. I understand sunlight acts as a bit of a disinfectant. I would like to know how much sunlight or indeed disinfectant will be needed to deal with the speakership deal. I think that will play itself out in due course and the Australian Labor Party will be able to justify, one assumes, what they did today with Mr Jenkins. Make no mistake—Mr Jenkins did not fall in love with his constituency all of a sudden. He did not suddenly decide he wanted to go to the backbench so he could go to more school fetes and do a bit more doorknocking before his retirement. He was forced out of that position by a grubby deal, the sort of grubby deal that this government does on a regular basis.

They did another one earlier this week with the Australian Greens, you will recall, and the Independents in the lower house who promised us transparency and were willing to let the mining tax go through not knowing what deal had been struck with the Australian Greens. Talk about lemmings! Is there nobody in the ALP caucus in the House of Representatives who has any sense of self-respect? They were required to vote, like lemmings, for a policy not knowing what they were voting for or why.

The Hansard is littered with all sorts of examples of the Leader of the Australian Greens and the other Greens talking about the issue of time for parliamentary debates. What a great promise that was: transparency—that there would be a parliamentary process, that we would consider things appropriately. As every senator in this place knows, we have now had 13 bills guillotined without one single word of debate spoken on them. This is transparency. This is Operation Sunlight according to the Australian Labor Party. What I have been able to portray is a seamless—