Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very proud of this government's record, both under Kevin Rudd and under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. We have much to be proud of, and Senator Joyce should not be lecturing us on stability, given his track record. A government is not a popularity contest. It is about making the right decisions in government for the national interest and for the Australian people, and that is something that this Labor government consistently does. We are a government that have been able to make the hard decisions—decisions in the national interest, in the interests of Australian families and in the interests of Australian jobs. We have a strong and functioning government. We have the many hundreds of bills that have been passed—major reforms that have passed the House of Representatives and indeed this chamber. We have a strong and effective government, a government that is getting on with governing and that has wheels that have kept turning.

We also have plans for the future. We have a strong Prime Minister. We have a committed and tough PM, and we have a big agenda. No. 1 at the top of our agenda, our top priority, is managing our economy. It is about giving working people a fair share of our nation's mineral resources. It is about getting our nation ready for the future—for the new economy that we know is emerging. They are difficult decisions because they are difficult things to balance, but we are managing the economy for working people and for jobs—just as we did during the global financial crisis under Kevin Rudd. Now, as you can also clearly see, we are doing it in the manufacturing and auto industries, unlike those opposite. We as a government will maintain our disciplined fiscal strategy. It is about delivering a budget surplus in 2012-13, and those opposite have no plan for the future in this regard. They have a $70 billion black hole, and they cannot deliver a budget surplus for this nation. Labor, on the other hand, is able to build on the fact that, for the first time in Australia's history, we have joined an elite group of countries which hold a AAA credit rating from all three global rating agencies. These are important things for our national interest.

The cost of living for Australian families is something that I and others on this side of this chamber are resolutely focused on. It is a key issue for Australian families, and we are delivering the policies that underpin—