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

I was really interested to hear Senator Cormann quote Lenin. What did he quote from Lenin? 'A lie told often enough becomes truth.' I thought he was talking about Tony Abbott, because the lies from the coalition about climate change, government debt and the global financial crisis are repeated time and time again in an attempt to try and make them truth. But they have failed.

If you want to quote Lenin, let me quote someone who did not achieve quite the international standing of Lenin—Robert Menzies. In a broadcast on 24 July 1942, when he was talking about his Liberal creed, Menzies said:

Nothing could be worse for democracy than to adopt the practice of permitting knowledge to be overthrown by ignorance.

Yet time and time again we see ignorance overthrowing knowledge on the opposite side. There are many in the coalition who understand the science of climate change, who understand the physics of climate change, but allow ignorance to overthrow both the science and the physics for short-term political advantage.

Menzies went on to say:

Fear can never be a proper or useful ingredient in those mutual relations of respect and good-will which ought to exist between the elector and the elected.

We have just heard a breakdown in that goodwill from Senator Cormann. The appeal to fear in his speech is typical of the coalition. They run fear campaigns on the budget, on climate change and on the global financial crisis—they are just totally consumed with fear campaigns. They should listen to what their spiritual leader Robert Menzies said about fear never being a proper or useful ingredient in mutual relations.

Senator Humphries interjecting—

As soon as you mention Robert Menzies and you start to identify what is supposedly the creed of the coalition, coalition senators get all antsy and uptight because they know exactly what Menzies was saying and they know that the Menzies creed is being destroyed, day in and day out, by the coalition under Tony Abbott. They know that there is no Liberal creed anymore. It is no wonder the coalition get all upset about being quoted the words of their spiritual leader—they are so far away from Robert Menzies, they are so far away from their spiritual leader, that they cannot sit quietly and listen to his words. They know they have rejected the creed and philosophy of Robert Menzies.

In that July 1942 broadcast, Menzies went on to say:

And so, as we think about it we shall find more and more how disfiguring a thing fear is in our own political and social life.

We have just witnessed from Senator Cormann a supposed analysis of the Labor government's budget, an analysis based on fear. What else did Robert Menzies say back in 1942? He said:

A political party must never be a party which chronically says "No."

This is the man who established the philosophy of the Liberal Party and he says you should never chronically say no. What is Tony Abbott about now if not chronically saying no to every issue? Menzies continued:

If it never loses sight of its own ideas, it will be positive and creative.

Where are the positive aspects of the coalition? They are nowhere to be seen. Where is the creativity of the coalition? It is nowhere to be seen. The coalition is about fear and negativity. That is the creed of the coalition in this parliament—fear and negativity.

Robert Menzies went on to say:

In brief, Australian Liberalism must present itself as the party of action, and the party of the future. We are not the ANTI party, but the PRO party.

I cannot see what the Liberal party or the coalition stand for. I know what they are against. They are against pricing carbon—when they were for it under John Howard. They are against spending government money to keep people in jobs. They are the anti party, the party that Robert Menzies said they should not be. They should not be the party of fear, he said, but they have become the party which promulgates fear, day in and day out and in every speech. Senator Cormann's speech was typical of the fear campaigns being mounted by the coalition.

Listen to your spiritual leader. He was not that great but at least he had the right idea on some of these issues. You should not promulgate fear, you should not promulgate negativity—you should actually have ideas of your own. But you have lost that capacity under the leadership of Tony Abbott. And what is this motion, which I oppose, saying? It says there are 'storm clouds on the global horizon'. At last, the coalition have actually lifted up their eyes from their own bootlaces, looked around the world and decided there are problems in the global economy! They have actually done it. I was shocked when I read the resolution, because since 2008 they have been denying that there is a global financial crisis. I remember senators on the other side describing it as the 'North American crisis'—