Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No government of any persuasion likes it when it does not get its way in the Senate. However, the Rudd Labor government has taken the level of moaning, whingeing and sulking about so-called Senate obstruction to new levels. The Rudd Labor government does not like it when its legislation and its performance—or rather its lack of performance—gets scrutinised by the Senate. But the truth of the matter is that the Senate protects the Australian people from bad government and bad legislation.

Last week as part of a pre-election strategy, as part of the strategy of a government that is trying to set itself up with excuses as to why they have not delivered on their pre-election commitments and why, even though they promised the world on a whole range of things, they have not been able to follow through, they are now trying to point the finger at the Senate to find justification for their failings and perhaps in the process find a way to justify in the public’s mind why they might need to rush to a double dissolution election. Last week we had five senior ministers, in a very confected press conference, running an attack on an obstructionist Senate. It was a very strange spectacle indeed, because, rather than getting on with the job of sorting things out and making things happen, we have a Rudd Labor government that is all talk and no action.

The principle is very simple: if the government puts forward good legislation, the Senate will support it; if the government puts forward bad legislation, the Senate will reject it. On occasion, I, along with colleagues on the Liberal-National Party benches, have experienced the government agreeing to negotiate improvements on what was very bad legislation. Dare I say it, there has been a series of backflips which have ultimately resulted in better policy outcomes for the Australian people as a direct result of the actions taken by Liberal Party, National Party, Greens and crossbench senators in response to deeply flawed government legislation.

I will pick a couple of examples. Remember the government’s attempts to cut funding for chemotherapy drugs by $100 million? It was a disgraceful, cold-hearted initiative from a cold-hearted government. They promise the world in health—that this was going to be a caring government that was going to make health a high priority—and they were cutting $100 million out of the budget for chemotherapy treatment. It was the scrutiny applied by senators in Senate estimates and the scrutiny applied by senators in this chamber that forced the most incompetent health minister since Federation, Nicola Roxon, to backflip and put the proposed $100 million cut for chemotherapy drugs onto the backburner. Then we had the proposal in the last budget from this cold-hearted, ideological Rudd Labor government to cut patient rebates for cataract surgery in half. This was yet another initiative that was going to hurt mostly elderly patients right across Australia, preventing them from getting access to life-changing surgery and forcing them into already overburdened public hospitals, making the situation worse for patients in both the public health system and the private health system and forcing elderly patients to either go without, at worst go blind, or take their chances in a public health system where the same procedure was going to cost more than the government was proposing to save through its cold-hearted, misguided and ideological budget cut. Those are just a few examples, but there is example after example where scrutiny in the Senate forced the government to reconsider and improve what was bad legislation.

Of course, we have had legislation put forward by the government which, even with the best of intentions, cannot be improved. We have had Labor’s flawed emissions trading scheme—the great, big new tax on everything; a great, big new tax which was going to push up the price of everything, cost jobs, put pressure on the economy and put our energy security at risk, and all of that without helping to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by one bit. Of course, it is the responsibility of the Senate to scrutinise the actions of a government that is trying to con the Australian people into believing that something is being done when nothing is being done and, worse, things are actually going to be worse as a direct result of what the government is proposing to do. The Senate asks very reasonable, legitimate and sensible questions in relation to all these things and the government, again and again, refuses to answer questions, refuses to release information and refuses to provide the Senate with modelling information, for example, which was at the basis of its Treasury modelling about the economic impact of its flawed emissions trading scheme. We believe to this day that the government and the Treasury economic modelling of the impact of the emissions trading scheme legislation underestimated the impact on jobs, on the cost of living, on our economy and on our energy security, and to this day the government has refused to provide any of that information.

We have had Nicola Roxon, the health minister, trying to push through the Senate the Labor government’s broken promise on private health insurance. Before the last election, the Labor Party went to the election with the most emphatic promise that they would not make the same mistakes they made in the past and that they would not pursue an ideological crusade against people with private health insurance, but of course—as we all knew before the election they would—that is exactly what they did. They pursued a broken promise which was going to be bad for the health system, put additional pressure on our public hospitals, push up the cost of health insurance for millions of Australians and seriously put our health system out of balance. Of course, the Senate was quite within its rights to scrutinise what the government was proposing to do and make a judgment on that legislation.

Let me just add that we Liberal-National Party senators might make a judgment on a particular piece of legislation from the government. We might be of the view that it is a bad piece of legislation. Labor’s broken promise on private health insurance rebates was a particularly bad piece of legislation. It was bad for our health system and it was bad for patients across Australia, and we made a judgment that it should not be supported. But it is not because we made the judgment that that particular bad piece of legislation should be rejected in the Senate; it is because other senators in this chamber shared our judgment. It is because other senators in this chamber took our view that Labor’s broken promise on private health insurance rebates would make things worse for our health system and not better, that it would put additional pressure on our public hospitals, not less, and that it was going to put our health system out of balance.

The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, was out there complaining about the Senate blocking the paid parental leave legislation—legislation that has not even been introduced into this Senate yet. How can we be blocking something that is not even before us? This government has become arrogant very quickly. The Rudd Labor government does not accept the important and legitimate responsibility of the Senate to scrutinise government legislation and to make a judgment that, if legislation put forward is bad legislation that is not in the national interest, then of course we should vote against it.

We had legislation the other day from Senator Conroy which essentially sought so break up Telstra. It was legislation which had serious ramifications for 1.4 million shareholders and their families, for 30,000 employees of Telstra and their families—working families—and for millions of customers of Telstra across the board. It was legislation whose sole purpose was to be a distraction from the absolute incompetence of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, who has been unable to deliver on the pre-election commitment for a national broadband network.

Everything that is being done by this government at present has to be seen in the context of a government desperate to do everything it can to see itself re-elected. This government is not governing in the national interest. This government is totally focused on its own political self-interest. The Rudd Labor government is not focused on what is good for the Australian people. The Rudd government is focused on what is good for itself. The only thing that stands between the Rudd Labor government doing the wrong thing by the Australian people is this Senate, which of course is making sound judgments on a whole range of broken promises, on a whole range of initiatives that are not in the public interest. This is exactly what we were elected to do. This is what the Australian people expect us to do. (Time expired)