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

I move:

That the following address–in–reply be agreed to:

To Her Excellency the Governor–General

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY–

We, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia in Parliament assembled, desire to express our loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign and to thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to Parliament.

I welcome this opportunity to move the address in reply to Her Excellency the Governor-General’s speech at the opening of this—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Pratt, before you continue I would remind senators that everyone will get an opportunity to reply to the address that was given yesterday.

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

I welcome this opportunity to move that the speech given by Her Excellency the Governor-General at the opening of the 43rd Parliament be agreed to. History was made yesterday as our first female Governor-General marked the opening of the Australian parliament with an address that outlined our new government’s plans for the future, a government headed by Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

Like our Prime Minister, Australia’s first female political candidate, Catherine Helen Spence, hailed from South Australia. Spence ran for the Australasian Federal Convention in 1897. Today she is better known as an advocate of women’s suffrage, but in her own day she was best known as an advocate for effective voting, or what we call ‘proportional representation’. Spence wrote:

The fundamental principle of proportional representation is that majorities must rule but that minorities shall be adequately represented. An intelligent minority of representatives has great weight and influence. Its voice can be heard. It can fully and truly express the views of the voters it represents.

Spence hoped that more effective representation would reduce the bitterness of party strife and strengthen independent thought and the integrity of our electoral system. She said:

The minority represented is the true sharpener of the wits of the ruling powers, the educator of the people and the animator of the press.

She looked for an end to ‘war by election’, where the winner takes all no matter how slim its majority. She wanted to restore to representation ‘its true meaning, that the elected body, the parliament, should be the mirror of the convictions and aspirations of the whole people’.

In this place we have some experience of what the weight and influence of an intelligent minority of representatives can mean in practice—more experience, I venture to say, than many of those in the other place. It sharpens the wits of the ruling powers, as any government without a majority in the Senate and any minister who has been grilled at estimates can attest. It can engage the public in parliamentary processes, as evidenced by the Senate committees’ robust system of public inquiries. And when the fourth estate deigns to focus on our proceedings, the result is often more issues based reporting and less obsession with personalities and political conflict.

In this place, we also know that effective representation of minorities is compatible with stable and effective government. We know that about 85 per cent of legislation is passed in this place with bipartisan support. Why is this the case? It is largely because many matters that come before the parliament are not controversial; they do not divide the nation or its major parties to any significant degree. On these matters, it is appropriate that the view of the overwhelming majority should prevail—and it does. It always has prevailed in this chamber and in the other place, and will prevail in this parliament—provided that ‘Her Majesty’s loyal opposition’ acts in good faith.

Where bipartisan support is lacking or unstable, and where public opinion is unclear or divided, the adequate representation of minorities becomes important. It is then that genuine consultation and good faith negotiation becomes critical if a way forward is to be found. It is then that the nation most needs a parliament that is a mirror of the convictions and aspirations of the people. On many such matters in the last parliament, the Labor government was able to negotiate with a diverse crossbench in the Senate to secure important reforms and gain support for vital initiatives. Where such negotiations failed, this more often than not reflected a lack of any deep lasting consensus in the community.

Those who maintain that strong minority representation is incompatible with effective government simply fail to comprehend what Spence grasped over a century ago—namely, that the effective representation of minorities can work to enhance majority rule, not undermine it. As a Labor government senator, I look forward to the continuing opportunity to work with all my parliamentary colleagues to this end.

It is ironic to say the least that some of those who seek to portray the current parliament as unworkable and the new government as unstable and impotent are the very same people whose government was fatally weakened when it mistook a majority in both houses for a mandate to act with impunity. The fate of the Howard government and its Work Choices legislation in 2007 illustrates just what happens when ruling powers mistake a majority for a mandate, ride roughshod over dissent and institute radical changes without community support. Neither the government nor the legislation survived. There is no stability, and no real potency, in making changes that are swiftly reversed because they lack real support. That is not strong leadership; it is simply a waste of time at best and dangerously destabilising at worst.

On the other hand, there are many examples of minority governments that have worked. And, reassuringly, some of the best examples are drawn from jurisdictions that share our political culture. We have seen such governments work in our own states. For a national example, we need only look across the Tasman. New Zealand’s first elected female Prime Minister led minority Labor governments for almost a decade, becoming the fifth-longest-serving Prime Minister in her nation’s history.

I am proud to be part of a government led by Australia’s first female Prime Minister—a government that welcomes the opportunities which this finely balanced parliament presents to be more open and more accountable, to build bridges, to think laterally and to lead by virtue of the power of our ideas and the persuasiveness of our arguments, not by weight of numbers alone. That is why it was so gratifying yesterday to hear the new government’s plans outlined by Her Excellency the Governor-General. Our plans for this parliamentary term make clear the strength of our vision for this country’s future—a vision founded squarely on Labor values that have broad appeal and wide application. Our plans offer a firm foundation for reform. They offer a sound basis on which to build the bridges necessary to bring real and lasting reforms to fruition.

The cornerstone of these plans is the sound management of our economy. Sound economic management will secure our prosperity by providing for sustainable growth—growth that endures, growth that is compatible with the preservation of our planet and our continent’s natural assets rich and rare, growth that delivers benefits for all Australians regardless of the circumstances of their birth or where they now live. This is not just because this outcome is more equitable, but also because it is more efficient.

A modern nation like ours, which competes in the global economy, cannot afford to waste the talents of its people. Such wastage breeds frustration, marginalisation and social dysfunction; more specifically, it breeds unemployment, poverty, crime, child abuse and neglect. We want the opposite. We want all shoulders to the wheel. And if we want all our citizens to take real responsibility for building a better future we must give everyone a real stake in the outcome—a real chance to benefit from the rewards that flow from hard work, initiative and innovation. Entrenched inequality and opportunity curtailed are incompatible with a peaceful and prosperous nation. That is why Labor is committed to a high-productivity high-participation economy that engages all our citizens in the economic life of the nation, develops their potential, fully utilises their talents, maximises reward for effort and minimises barriers to innovation, initiative and achievement.

This is why we are committed to a prudent fiscal strategy. It is a strategy that will see us returning to surplus in three years—long before most of the rest of the developed world—so that public sector debt does not become a drag on our economy. As the recovery picks up speed and the private sector expands, the strategy is about creating new businesses and new jobs. It is why we are committed to further micro-economic reform and deregulation—a process begun under the Hawke-Keating government and continued through our COAG reforms. These reforms are designed to create a seamless national economy and drive competition so that private sector initiative and enterprise is rewarded rather than stymied by arbitrary or unnecessary regulation.

Our commitment to sustainable prosperity is also why we support a price on carbon. A carbon price will not only help save the planet but will also keep us ahead of the game when it comes to investing in the infrastructure, skills and technologies needed to secure the jobs of the future so that Australians win rather than lose as the world shifts to a low-carbon economy. Our belief in a high-productivity high-participation economy is fundamental to our passion for health reform. It is unjust that the burden of ill health falls unevenly on Australians and it is a human tragedy that so many in our community suffer from preventable illnesses. It is also a colossal waste of human potential—a waste that costs our economy very dearly in terms of both medical expenditure and lost productivity. That is why when we weigh up the worth of the NBN we must take into account the benefits of the e-health services it can deliver—economic as well as social benefits that are no less great for being hard to calculate.

Our commitment to sustainable prosperity is why we believe we should accept the extra tax that our most successful mining companies say they can pay. That extra revenue will help fund much-needed infrastructure, especially in our mining regions. It will help fund tax cuts for all businesses and tax breaks targeted at small business—tax relief that will maximise rewards for enterprise and help drive private sector job creation and innovation.

Furthermore, the minerals resource rent tax will help support improvements to superannuation. Improvements in super will help secure better retirement incomes for working Australians and reduce public expenditure on income support as the population ages. They will also increase the pool of national savings, reduce reliance on foreign capital and facilitate further investments in our economic capacity. These investments are critical to both maximising the rewards of this mining boom and to minimising its risks—risks that threaten to divide us into winners and losers, not just between the boom states and others but also within the states that generate our mining wealth.

In many ways the risks posed by the mining boom are greatest in states like my own state of Western Australia. It is there that skills shortages will be most acute if we do not act decisively, and it is there that such shortages are most likely to put upward pressure on wages. Such pressure feeds inflation and can undermine the viability of businesses in the non-mining sectors, where most people are employed, even in Western Australia. Anyone who lived through the last mining boom in WA can testify to its impact on housing affordability throughout the state. That is why we must invest in the infrastructure and the corporate tax relief that will help ensure that all our industries, all our regions and all our citizens can prosper. That is why we must act decisively to confront looming skills shortages.

Above all, our belief in a high-productivity high-participation economy necessitates a commitment to continuing the education revolution and building first-class facilities for our schools and tertiary institutions so that they are equipped to prepare the next generation for life and work in a highly competitive 21st century globalised economy; a commitment to greater transparency and a focus on quality in our schools and universities so that failures can be addressed and success recognised and rewarded; and a commitment to training and immigration strategies that more tightly target current and emerging skills shortages. We should give preference to equipping our own citizens for the jobs of today and tomorrow wherever possible. This is the best way to ensure that more of the jobs created by the mining boom benefit all Australians. It is about ensuring that we stand ready to take advantage of new opportunities as they emerge over the long term.

If we get the management of the economy right, more of our citizens will enjoy the benefits and dignity of work, and we will be able to spend less on the social ills that unemployment and poverty bring. It will leave more room for further tax reform and further investment in all those things that enrich Australians’ lives and lighten the burdens of our neighbours. As a nation we can invest in sport and culture and in being good global citizens while making our fair contribution to peace and prosperity in our region and beyond.

I conclude by reiterating how much I welcome and appreciate this opportunity to move the address-in-reply and how proud I am to be part of a government that stands ready to lead through the strength of its values, the quality of its ideas, the persuasiveness of its arguments and the inclusiveness and integrity of its processes.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve the right to speak later in the debate.

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

I congratulate Senator Pratt on being chosen by her colleagues to move the address-in-reply. Her Excellency’s address to this place yesterday highlighted the ongoing deficiencies of this ongoing Labor government—a government that failed when it had an absolute majority in the House of Representatives and is already continuing to fail without a majority. In the speech yesterday there was no mention of what the government was going to do for the thousands of Australians who still have electrified roofs and are living in danger of their houses burning down because of Labor’s bungled pink batt and insulation scheme. It has been simply airbrushed out of the pages of history. That is what Labor thought. But it is not so, because we as a coalition will continue to make the government accountable.

Similarly, there was no mention in the speech about the green loans scandal. It has been simply airbrushed out. But no way: we will put it back onto the agenda. Similarly with the waste we saw with Building the Education Revolution. On the ‘quality buildings’ that Senator Pratt referred to, I recall campaigning in the seat of Riverina during the election campaign and seeing one of these quality structures absolutely and utterly collapsed. It was an absolute debacle. But, according to Labor, this is a quality building of which they stand proud. I wonder which Labor minister is going to be opening that one!

The speech provided to Her Excellency by the government was full of spin, not substance. Indeed, at the very beginning we were told:

... the remarkable circumstance of our nation having its first female Governor-General and first female Prime Minister.

This historic conjunction should be an inspiration not only to the women and girls of our nation but to all Australians.

Great words, great inspirational stuff, but what did Ms Gillard do as soon as she left this chamber? She went to the House of Representatives with a deliberate ploy to sack the female Labor Deputy Speaker in favour of a male coalition Deputy Speaker. There you have it: absolute gender equality with the Labor Party! Why did they do this? Because it was worth a political stunt. As a result, by a deliberate decision of Ms Gillard and Labor to remove the existing female Labor Deputy Speaker from her position, the three speakers in the House of Representatives are all male. Where is Ms Kirner, where is EMILY’S List, where is the Women’s Electoral Lobby—indeed, where is Senator Kate Lundy—on this issue? They are deathly silent because, when it comes to Labor Party political stunts or looking after women in the Australian parliament, it will always be Labor Party political stunts that come first. Very early on in the Governor-General’s speech we had an indication that this Labor government is just a continuation from Mr Rudd: all spin and no substance. When the acid test is applied are they going to live up to being an inspiration to the young women and girls of this country? What they will have to point to is one very, very disappointed Ms Anna Burke, who yesterday, with virtually no notice—in fact, some would say an unfair dismissal claim could be lodged here—was dumped as Labor’s Deputy Speaker. So we had spin above substance.

Then we were told about transparency, a new paradigm, and that everything would be open for the Australian people to examine. Well, Ms Gillard has another test today. As I understand it, Graham Richardson—no friend of the coalition—has indicated that two ministers refused to be sacked by Ms Gillard. Ms Gillard says that she chooses her own ministers. But, according to Mr Richardson, one minister said to her: ‘Dare to sack me! If you do, we’ll resign from the parliament and we’ll create by-elections for you, which you might lose, and as a result deliver government to the coalition. So you’ve got no choice but to reappoint us.’ I make this claim today. The chances are that it might have been the Attorney-General and the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth. But I fully accept I might be wrong.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Garrett.

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

Mr Garrett, by the way.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Lundy interjecting—

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

But, of course, Ms Gillard can get rid of all that by levelling with the Australian people and telling them exactly what happened. Let us see if this new era of transparency applies to her government and to ministerial appointments.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tony Abbott’s new world of made-ups!

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

Senator Lundy has finally found her tonsils again. But she was not able to defend the decision on Anna Burke, what she? Very interesting. This government started breaking its promises before it was sworn in. It was already dealing with the Australian Greens, making a deal in the vexed area of whether or not this nation should have a carbon tax. Let us just recall for history how Ms Gillard and her deputy, Mr Swan, ran the last election campaign. On 15 August Mr Swan said this:

... what we rejected is this hysterical—

mark the word ‘hysterical’—

allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax ...

That was six days before the last federal election. Five days before the last federal election Ms Gillard said:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

Then on the day before the election—and this is how hot a topic this was during the campaign—on the very last day of the campaign, on 20 August, Ms Gillard said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

Where is that promise today, given the grubby deal that they have made with their new alliance partners, the Australian Greens? Now, after the election, after having been sworn in again, Ms Gillard was asked by a journalist:

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you ruling out a carbon tax? Is that something you will look at?

PM: Look, we’ve said we would work through options in good faith at the committee that I have formed involving, of course, the Greens, and it’s my understanding that Mr Windsor will also seek to participate in that committee. We want to work through options, have the discussions at that committee in good faith.

JOURNALIST: So you’re not ruling it out then?

PM: Well, look, you know, I just think the rule-in, rule-out games are a little bit silly.

Well, if ruling in and ruling out was ‘a little bit silly’ after the election, why did she specifically rule it out before the election? If it was a silly game after the election, it was a silly game before the election. But she knew that she was headed to electoral oblivion unless she gave that rock-solid guarantee that there would be no carbon tax—a carbon tax which will inflict even higher prices on the cost of electricity and the cost of living for each and every Australian, inflate food prices and, if Australia goes it alone, have the perverse impact of making the world’s carbon dioxide emissions even greater. Why? Because, as we price out our manufacturing industry with a carbon tax, they will simply move from Australia to those countries without a carbon tax. Indeed, in my home state of Tasmania we have a zinc works—I use this example on a regular basis—producing one tonne of zinc for two tonnes of CO2. In China they create that same tonne of zinc for six tonnes of CO2. So if you price our manufacturing sector out of the world marketplace, the world will start buying their zinc from China—no longer from Tasmania and South Australia—and, as a result, the carbon footprint on the world will be even greater. That is the perverse outcome of Australia going it alone with a carbon tax. Ms Gillard knew that. She knew the threat to jobs in all these manufacturing sectors, and that is why she specifically ruled it out. Six days before the election, five days before the election—on the day before the election, she ruled it out. And yet now it is a silly game to play, asking her to rule it in or out.

What it means is that Labor thinks they can break every solemn promise they made to the Australian people by virtue of the fact that they had to sell their political soul and their principles to cobble together a government of such diverse colours, from the extreme left of the Australian Greens to country conservatives. They try to sell it as a rainbow coalition. Yes, it is a rainbow coalition. Rainbows, as we all know, look pretty—but they are illusory. If you try to touch them they are not there. The closer you get to them, the further away they get.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cash interjecting—

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

And, Senator Cash, at the end of this one there is definitely no pot of gold. In fact, there will be one huge deficit, the exact opposite, at the end of this particular so-called rainbow.

So, Madam Acting Deputy President, what we have is a government that said one thing to squeak its way back into office and is now doing the exact opposite. It is nearly doing the opposite of a Kevin—a ‘Nivek’, I suppose we will have to call it. Remember the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’? Nothing was more important. We needed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I must say that Nivek nearly has a nice Russian sound about it—but we will not go there. Anyway, that was the big moral issue of our time, and then—

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz, I want to remind you that, if you are referring to people in the other place, they do have a correct title other than their Christian name.

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

You are right, Madam Acting Deputy President, but it would spoil it somewhat. But you are quite right.

The Acting Deputy President:

And you could address your remarks through the chair occasionally. That would be useful, thank you.

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

I do not think I was addressing any senator directly, Madam Acting Deputy President, but if you want to hear ‘Madam Acting Deputy President’ scattered a few times in my remarks I am more than happy to oblige.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She’d like eye contact.

The Acting Deputy President:

Yes, exactly.

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

What I was saying was that the Labor Party under then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time. Then, all of a sudden, it could be dumped. Now Ms Gillard has done the exact opposite. She went to an election saying, ‘I specifically rule out a carbon tax,’ and now, after the election, all of a sudden she is going to bring it back in, so she is doing the exact reverse of that which the honourable member for Griffith undertook.

Madam Acting Deputy President, we were also told about a stronger economy in this speech. We recall that, when Ms Gillard took over from Mr Rudd, she was also going to become a converted economic conservative. She promised the Australian people that there would be spending cuts—a very wise policy move, one which we endorsed. During the election campaign, can anybody recall any spending cuts that were announced? Were any spending cuts announced in Her Excellency’s address to the parliament setting out the government’s agenda? Not one. But there were expenditure announcements relating to the $10 billion deal that Ms Gillard did with the country Independents. There we have it: before the election, Ms Gillard promising cuts so that we could have fiscal responsibility; straight after the election, delivering a further $10 billion completely and utterly unfunded.

Talking about things unfunded, we have the celebration in this speech of the National Broadband Network. What were we told about that? We were told, amongst other things, that it would be affordable. What is the price? What is the cost? There has been no business case presented. There is no price on it, yet they just make this bold claim, the spin, that it is affordable. But, when you ask Senator Conroy, who usually sits opposite, what the price will be for a connection and the monthly rental, he is unable to answer. So how can they make the assertion that it is somehow affordable?

If you want another insight into this government, all you need to do is read about the minerals resource rent tax. Do you know what is celebrated in the speech? That it was agreed with our nation’s biggest miners. What about the country’s small miners—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s 99 per cent of the industry.

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

and medium-sized miners who make up—as Senator Cormann quite rightly interjects—make up 99 per cent of the mining companies in this country. They are completely and utterly discarded and considered irrelevant, because this government does deals with big business and big unions and they love big government. We on the coalition side do not subscribe to that. We think a better outcome would have been to get a consensus with the other 99 per cent, not with the one per cent and trumpeting that as a triumph. But, no; for Ms Gillard and Labor the spin always has to be with the big companies; do a quick deal and the rights of small business can simply be trampled on and forgotten. It is not so on this side. We will continue to fight against that tax, which will impact on every Australian. Make no mistake: mining is a world activity these days. People will decide where to invest, and Australia has now slid ‘something chronic’ as a place for investment in the resources sector. The sovereign risk is now so great that many South American companies outdo us, courtesy of the economic genius of Mr Rudd and now Ms Gillard.

There are many other matters that I could canvass in relation to this speech. One thing I am pleased about is that on our side of politics disabilities is now looked after by a genuine shadow minister. It has been elevated in our thinking. It is the appropriate thing to do. The Labor Party talks about an inclusive society but disabilities remains with a parliamentary secretary. If Labor genuinely wants to call itself an inclusive government, let it follow our example in that regard. There are many things wrong with this government. I move the following amendment to the Governor-General’s address-in-reply:

The Senate regrets that the Gillard Government has already broken its promises to the Australian people by, among other things:

(1)

announcing a carbon tax, contrary to the Prime Minister’s express assurances both during the election campaign and immediately afterward that there would be no carbon tax;

(2)

instead of seeking a consensus on measures to deal with climate change, instituting a committee, the conclusions of which are predetermined;

(3)

failing to announce any measures to deal with the influx of asylum-seekers arriving by sea;

(4)

failing to provide for a dedicated Minister for Education;

(5)

failing to provide for a dedicated Minister for Disability Services;

(6)

failing to clarify its position on the private health insurance rebate; and

(7)

failing to announce economically responsible measures to deal with housing affordability; and

(8)

announcing to the Australian people that the Government would not be bound by the promises it made to voters during the election campaign.

And further notes that the Government has outlined no credible plan to:

• bring the budget into surplus
• to cut waste
• pay off the debt
• to stop the boats
• or to stop new taxes, such as the mining tax.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take great pleasure in supporting the motion on the address given to us by Her Excellency the Governor-General. May I say at the outset that she is a most impressive Governor-General and her work as the most senior Australian under our constitution has gained great admiration around the country. I thank her for the job she is doing. The speech she delivered yesterday we all know was effectively written by the government—that is a part of the Westminster system, and we understand that—but we congratulate her on her presentation and thank her for opening this 43rd parliament.

She noted at the outset of the speech that she was the first female Governor-General at the same time that we have the first elected female Prime Minister. I would add to that that I am very pleased to be the leader of a party which has a predominance of females in its ranks, and that will become even more so when the senators elect join us in this House on 1 July next year. The honourable senator in moving this motion referred to Catherine Helen Spence, who I call the ‘mother of Federation’. She hailed from South Australia. She was a great worker for suffrage, including ensuring that females got the vote in federal parliament right from the outset, way ahead of what was then called the ‘mother country’ of the United Kingdom. But we have work to do yet, right across this country, to ensure that—not only in this parliament but in business and in decision making wherever it might be—there is proper representation for females. It is something we have not achieved yet and it is an area in which other countries similar to ours are way ahead—for example, Norway. Better female representation in the business sector is something where Australia lags right behind.

I note Senator Abetz’s rather negative response. He moved right at the end of his speech, almost as a desultory add-on, an amendment condemning the Gillard government for broken promises to the Australian people. I would be surprised if during this debate another amendment does not enter this place which condemns the opposition— the coalition, led by Mr Abbott—for the first egregious breach of a written commitment in the parliament. We are not talking about election commitments here; we are talking about commitments post election to ensure pairing of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker in the House of Representatives. There was a very public breach of a promise on a written agreement in order to try to gain political advantage, and it should be condemned.

The opposition is saying that the Prime Minister has changed at least some commitments made in the run-up to the election. It is time that the opposition understood that this is a minority government and that in the establishment of a minority government there has to be give and take and that this is something highly appreciated by the Australian people. I am very clearly aware that, without breaching unnecessarily any confidences, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, was well prepared to make commitments in the post-election period—if necessary contrary to his pre-election promises—if it was going to help him become the leader of government. It is a case of, at best, the pot calling the kettle black for the coalition to move this amendment.

I move on in my speech on the address-in-reply to the much more positive outcomes that we are seeing unfold in our Australian democracy in the wake of the vote of the people of Australia on 21 August. That vote, amongst other things, went to the Australian Greens to the tune of 12 per cent in the House and 13 per cent in the Senate. It has meant a stronger complement of Greens coming into this parliament, though I hasten to add that that figure of, I think, 11.3 per cent in the House would translate to 15 to 17 Greens members in the House of Representatives if the principle of proportional representation were applied. Proportional representation or the simple dictum of one person, one vote, one value—if Greens voters were to be given equality with voters for Labor and Liberal—would mean 15 or more Greens members in the House of Representatives at the moment.

This is a question which is going to be dealt with increasingly in public discourse in the coming years. Democracy is based on one person, one vote, one value and our single member electorate system in the House, which has been in place for more than a hundred years, fails to deliver that outcome. Many other countries have moved to proportional representation. That does deliver a much greater equality of vote, and it needs to be fixed in our parliamentary system. It does not require a constitutional change. In fact, it was Katherine Helen Spence along with Tasmanian Attorney-General Clark who fought strongly to ensure that in the Constitution it was up to the parliament to determine the voting system for both houses. That enabled the Senate to become proportionally representative, at least at state level. There is an inequality, as we know, between the populations of the various states which leads to a weighting of the votes cast in them, but it was a necessary component of the coming together of the colonies to create the great Commonwealth that we have. However, it was not until the 1940s that proportional representation was applied to voting for the Senate. It is time that we looked at proportional representation being brought into the House to give us a fairer democracy and to give all voters greater equality in their vote.

Consequent to the election, I and my colleagues spoke with people on both sides of the two-party system which formerly ruled in the House. Of course, central to our deliberation was the election of Adam Bandt as the member for Melbourne and the first Greens MP elected to the House of Representatives at a full parliamentary election. We previously had Michael Organ elected at a by-election for Cunningham, which is in Wollongong, but this is the first time that in a full election a Greens candidate has been elected to the House of Representatives, despite the weight against it in the parliamentary system. We have seen three or four other seats in which, if you look at the two-party preferred outcome, it is a contest between the Greens and a candidate from another party. In each case it happens to be a candidate from the Labor Party, but in the future we are going to see Greens versus the coalition in seats around the country. The Greens will be moving to get a greater representation in the House and indeed in the Senate in the coming years. What we have seen here is that those people who voted Green know that they are getting value for their vote and that no longer can it be said that a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote. Quite to the contrary, a vote for the Greens is now a vote for a powerful voice in the national parliament.

In my dealings with the Hon. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, I have encountered a frank, honest, intelligent person. She has at all times lent me a courteous and listening ear as well as giving me a very correct presentation of her position as leader of the Australian Labor Party as she moved towards establishing the numbers, if you like, to become Prime Minister. I thank her for that.

We will have between the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party in the coming three years a very businesslike working relationship, and there will be sniping from the sidelines—it is from the opposition; we are used to that—because it is clear that Mr Abbott’s and the coalition’s position is to try to wreck this period of governance by being negative as we have just heard in that delivery from Senator Abetz. There is not much positive about it at all. That is the old—to use the new word—paradigm, the much overused word paradigm, but things will change. I, like the Prime Minister, invite the opposition to be positive and to take part in the establishment of policy as we go down the line. I will be talking about a couple of those things in the eight minutes left here, and my colleagues will expand on this in the debate in coming days.

Firstly, a climate change committee has been established and that has been well publicised. It involves people who believe that there should be a carbon price and who want to genuinely tackle climate change. One or two opposition people are shaking their heads at this moment because they feel excluded. They are very welcome to set up a climate sceptics’ committee and bring a report into the parliament as to why we should take no action in establishing a carbon price and why business should be—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You would support a committee like that.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will not, Senator, support a committee like that because I believe that lets down the nation. Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I think we have to accept our responsibility in tackling the enormous threat to our economy, employment, the lifestyle of the future of this nation’s great assets like the Great Barrier Reef, our biodiversity generally, the snowfields and the Murray-Darling Basin which are not just threatened by climate change but are already affected by climate change and face—the Great Barrier Reef for one—death by mid-century through climate change and acidification through this stacking of the polluting of the atmosphere with coal. It is our responsibility to tackle this responsibly and which the opposition chose no proclivity to act upon in our time.

That committee will be working hard to achieve an outcome, and we are committed to it and we are committed to climate change action as best this parliament can arrange in the coming years. My colleague Senator Christine Milne is vice-chair of that committee. She has an enormous knowledge of not just climate change but the best way forward for us to not just see it as a challenge but as an opportunity as we green our economy and take full advantage of a new technological age in which we can tackle climate change while boosting the economy, the job outcome and the advantages of massive export income that comes with that. One only has to look at the success of, for example, Germany to understand that that is the direction this sunny country of ours should be going in.

Amongst other things that have been established in this agreement with the government is that there will be a leaders’ debate commission set up so that we do not get the farce of jockeying between the two old parties on how leaders’ debates in the run to future elections should go. An independent commission will look at all matters to ensure that the public sees a reasonable debate between parliamentary leaders—and I do not exclude future Greens leaders from that; they should be included.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Present ones as well.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Senator Humphries, the present leader—that is me—was very willing to be involved in the debate but neither side wanted that in the run to the last election.

I think Senator Faulkner can take a lot of credit for moves to lower the donation disclosure threshold to political parties from the $11,500 as has come to us from the Howard era to $1,000 and truth in advertising to be instituted under changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The Greens have been pursuing that very strongly. It is noted in the agreement that the Greens are predisposed to a system of full public funding for elections as in Canada. We will also be moving for a private member’s bill for above-the-line preferential voting in the Senate.

The other matters that are encompassed in the agreement involve the establishment of an information commissioner to help ensure that matters involving government are disclosed to the public. Importantly, Senator Siewert and I spoke with the honourable minister Jenny Macklin this morning about progress towards the referenda which we hope will be held, if not during this period of governance then at the next election, to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution. I can assure everybody that there will be wide-ranging public consultation, not least with First Australians, in the move towards that referendum as well as a referendum on recognising local government. It is missing from the Constitution, and the Local Government Authority and the local governments across this country—500 or so of them—have been wanting that recognition. It is something I believe, if we get cross-party support, will be adopted by the people of Australia, given the opportunity at the next election.

We will also be exploring ways to ensure we get three-year terms of government. One of the things the Greens are committed to is stability in this period of government, whatever the opposition may throw at it. We will be moving to see what can be done under the constitutional arrangement, which is for three-year government—you need a referendum if you are going to four-year governments—and to ensure three-year terms of parliament are as far as possible guaranteed. The improvements to question time in the House taken from this Senate—and there is nothing like a successful change to standing orders in one place for strength in argument that it be adopted in another place—are now being taken up.

Also important is the consideration of private members’ legislation, which is something that I have been working hard on. We brought it before the Senate in the last three years but it got nowhere. The breakthrough with this new arrangement with the Gillard government is that now we will see a change of rules—and I hope the opposition will be amenable to this; I believe they will be—to get at least 2½ hours per week private members’ debate in each chamber.

I have flagged, amongst the many bills which I have moved to now be restored to the Notice Paper, the restoration of the democratic right of the parliaments in Darwin and in Canberra, the assemblies, to be able to legislate on the matter of euthanasia. I note, by the way, that there is an attack on me again in the Australian, from Paul Kelly, editor-at-large, on that matter today. When you get to the heart of it, he says this:

But what, exactly, are people supporting? The 1996-97 debate provides the answer …

He is referring to polls of 80 per cent showing support for euthanasia. He goes on:

… most people think that turning off life-support machines and discontinuing life-preserving treatment is euthanasia.

This is, again, the patronising attitude from the Australian that the Australian people cannot think for themselves, are not informed and do not know what it is that they are saying they want when they support euthanasia. It is time the Australian levelled a bit more and instead of dictating to the Australian people reflected a little more on the fact that people are intelligent enough to think for themselves. There will be much more in this debate. I am very excited about the coming three years. I commit to the debate being handled responsibly. I thank the chamber for listening so courteously.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to reply to the Governor-General’s speech, which was delivered on the first day of sitting of the Gillard Labor government in this 43rd Parliament. It was with honour and pride this morning that I was able to second the motion on the Governor-General’s speech. I wish to use this opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the Labor government over the past three years, given that many of the outcomes will come to fruition over the next period of government. These will be the outcomes from significant changes to our industrial sector, our education system, our economy and the election of our first female Prime Minister.

When the Australian Labor Party took up government, there were many items on the agenda. We set out to abolish Work Choices, the legislation which compelled me to run for office and the very thing which took away our workers’ rights. As representatives of working families, we knew that they deserved a fairer system of industrial law. On 19 March 2008, the Australian parliament passed the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, which prevents employers from making Australian workplace agreements and introduced a no disadvantage test for new collective agreements. We passed the Fair Work Bill 2009 to ensure that Australians had fair, relevant and enforceable minimum terms and conditions which could not be pushed aside for individual employment agreements.

We have ensured that workers cannot be dismissed unfairly in workplaces of fewer than 100 employees, like they could under Work Choices, the initiative of the previous Howard coalition government. We introduced Fair Work Australia, an independent body to handle workplace issues such as a safety net for minimum wages and employment conditions, enterprise bargaining, industrial action, dispute resolution and the termination of employment. We also introduced the Fair Work Australia Ombudsman to promote harmonious and cooperative workplace relations and compliance by providing education, assistance and advice.

Prime Minister Gillard, who was then Minister for Workplace Relations, said in her second reading speech that these changes were exactly what the Australian public wanted. She said:

… Australians voted for a workplace relations system that delivers a fair go, the benefits of mateship at work, a decent safety net and a fair way of striking a bargain.

That is what this bill does.

We set out to say sorry to our Indigenous Australians. On 13 February 2008 Kevin Rudd, as Prime Minister, delivered the apology. For many years the treatment of our Indigenous Australians was pushed under the rug and no-one spoke about it. If no-one mentioned it then we could pretend it did not happen, but that was wrong. After years of silence it was time to end this denial and to acknowledge the ill-treatment received by our Indigenous Australians.

We set out to apologise to our forgotten Australians. On 16 November 2009 we acknowledged the hurt and suffering half a million children raised in institutions and orphanages had experienced. We said sorry.

During our first term we faced the biggest economic challenge of our time, the global financial crisis. It threatened our economy, our jobs, our working families, our businesses and our livelihoods. To keep Australia afloat, the Labor government introduced our $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan to stimulate the economy and to make sure Australians stayed employed. That economic initiative has become the envy of leaders of every country. That economic stimulus package targeted infrastructure, education, small business, social housing, defence housing, renewable energy, roads and, of course, our working families.

One of the major aspects of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan was the Building the Education Revolution. The $16.2 billion project was implemented to deliver 24,000 projects across Australia, to modernise our schools with 21st century facilities, to keep the local construction business afloat, to keep workers employed and to stimulate investment. Already many of those projects have been officially opened and are being utilised by enthusiastic students, grateful teachers and the wider community.

I have been privileged to visit many schools in Queensland and will continue to do so over the months to come. All the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. There have been comments from principals, teachers, parents, students and parents and citizens association members who are overwhelmed by the very existence of the initiatives. In fact, the most profound comments came from Dayboro State School Principal Mrs Glynnis Gartside, whose school received a multipurpose hall and a library resource centre. She said she had not seen anything like it before. At the opening of the BER facilities on 14 July she went on to say:

Firstly, we are happy. These new facilities, that we wouldn’t have even dared to dream of two years ago, are well built, appropriate to our needs and will serve the Dayboro community well into the future. Secondly, in my long career as a teacher with Education Queensland, this is my 39th year, I have never seen first class facilities like these made available to primary schools unless the pressure of growth or sheer decay of existing facilities has made it absolutely necessary. It just goes to show that if you stay around long enough anything can happen.

Schools now have multipurpose halls where, for the first time, they can fit the entire student body in a building for an assembly. They have new resource centres and libraries with innovative furniture, creating the perfect learning environment.

Benowa State School on the Gold Coast has a new I Centre, full of chairs which with the flick of a lever become desks. This allows classes to study in the library. And, if they are having a seminar or speeches, the I Centre instantly doubles the number of chairs. Through a door of the I Centre you enter a dance studio. A full of mirrors and a ballet bar greet you. It is extraordinary to see this type of facility available in a school. The wider community also benefits, with local groups able to utilise these new buildings.

But it does not stop there. Chevallum State School on the Sunshine Coast were finally able to get the multipurpose hall in which they wanted to put a fully functional kitchen. The school has been involved in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden national program, where students grow, harvest and cook their own food. This initiative hopes to educate students on how to prepare and eat healthy foods and to tackle the levels of childhood obesity.

About 9,500 schools have benefited from this initiative, which has not only given schools new halls and libraries but also given students the opportunity to keep active and play sport in wet weather while being sheltered from the elements. It has been disappointing, however, to hear from those opposite, who have called these fantastic facilities ‘glorified garden sheds’. Rather, I have witnessed rooms full of computers, new halls open to community groups and the opportunity for our future generations to move forward with 21st century facilities.

We have also developed a national curriculum which is currently being tested around the country. The program, which is being delivered online, will ensure that children who move interstate are not disadvantaged. It currently focuses on English, maths, science and history, and the new phase will concentrate on languages, geography and the arts.

Another initiative of National Building and Jobs Plan was the boost to the First Home Owner Grant. The scheme helped 250,000 Australians break into the housing market and buy their own homes. The first home owner boost provided an additional $7,000 to the already existing $7,000 first home owners grant, and those who chose to purchase or build a brand new home received $14,000 on top of the grant. This has supported thousands of jobs in the housing supply industry, including electricians, plumbers, builders and tradespersons.

Strong economic management is another achievement the Labor government can add to its belt, with the economic stimulus package keeping Australia strong. We have the lowest debt and deficit of all major advanced economies. We have the lowest unemployment rate of all major advanced economies. We were the only major advanced economy to avoid recession and we maintained our AAA credit rating. If the Labor government had not been decisive in our action during the global financial crisis, about 200,000 jobs would have been lost. That is 200,000 working families that would have been affected. Instead, more than 350,000 jobs have been created in the past year. Interest rates are still lower than they were when John Howard left office, and we have delivered tax cuts for our working families and low-income earners: someone who earns $50,000 a year is now paying $1,750 less than in 2007.

During our first term we overhauled the pension system to make it adequate for more than four million Australians who depend on their social security benefits. We looked after pensioners with significant increases, along with indexation resulting in contemporary amounts of about $115 a fortnight for singles and $97 a fortnight for couples on the age pension.

Our working families will also benefit from Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme, which was passed in the Senate earlier this year and comes into effect on 1 January 2011. I was honoured to be part of the inquiry into the scheme and to hear from the witnesses about the benefits of this particular scheme. Primary carers who meet the paid parental leave work-test case before the baby is born, have an income of less than $150,000 a year and meet residency requirements will be eligible for 18 weeks leave paid at the national minimum wage, currently $569.90. This leave can be taken at the same time, before or after employer provided maternity leave. The Paid Parental Leave scheme enables a woman to stay connected to the workforce. Continuing ties with the employee also provides a benefit to the employer, who will be able to retain skilled staff. It gives mothers time to stay home with the baby to improve child development outcomes, it helps support breastfeeding and it gives mothers a reasonable period to recover from childbirth. To benefit new fathers, the Gillard government will also move to implement paid paternity leave of two weeks at the national minimum wage, to allow both parents quality time at home after the birth of their child.

In a few short years, the Labor government has added many achievements to its name, and it will work to build on those foundations to make a difference in this nation. Already we are preparing to tackle one of the biggest issues and one that affects every single person in this country: health. Our National Health and Hospitals Network aims to deliver better hospitals and health care for all Australians, including those who live in remote areas. If implemented, it will be the biggest reform to the healthcare system since the introduction of Medicare. It will be funded nationally and run locally.

The Commonwealth will fund 60 per cent of every public hospital service provided to public patients; 60 per cent of recurrent expenditure on research and training functions undertaken in public hospitals; 60 per cent of block funding paid against a COAG-agreed funding model, including for agreed functions, services and community service obligations required to support small regional and rural public hospitals; and 60 per cent of capital expenditure, on a ‘user cost of capital’ basis where possible. The Commonwealth will also take on full policy and funding responsibility for primary health care and aged care.

These reforms will allow for more training places for doctors and nurses, improve waiting times in emergency departments and ensure elective surgeries are performed within recommended access times. On 20 April 2010 the Council of Australian Governments, COAG—with the exception of the Western Australian government—agreed to support the National Health and Hospitals Network.

Additionally, to tackle health concerns at a local level, the Labor government established the GP superclinic program to strengthen primary health care. We promised 36 new GP superclinics in our 2007 election commitment and we will be delivering another 23. Another 425 existing clinics will be expanded. One of these clinics was built in my duty electorate of Dickson and opened in January this year—two months ahead of schedule. Local residents now have better access to healthcare services thanks to the Strathpine GP Superclinic, which is in the heart of Strathpine, just five minutes from my office.

The Strathpine GP Superclinic provides primary health care and allied health services all under the same roof, and all Medicare rebateable services are bulkbilled. Along with general practitioners, the clinic offers a physiotherapist, chiropractor, dietician and diabetes educator, psychologist, audiologist, exercise physiologist and podiatrist. It also has fully trained nurses, including an Indigenous health nurse to help close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health and life expectancy. The GP superclinic’s health professionals work in multidisciplinary teams to provide patients with integrated, patient centred care. The clinic has a focus on providing preventative and chronic disease management services. It will also help to train and expand the future health workforce and it is working with the University of Queensland to provide clinical experience to medical, nursing and allied health students.

About 100,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year, which is why the Labor government is committed to better treatment, prevention and research of this insidious disease. We have already invested $2.3 billion to fight cancer, including providing $526 million in infrastructure funding to build two integrated cancer centres in Sydney and Melbourne that will provide state-of-the-art cancer treatment combined with cutting-edge research and establishing a network of 20 new and enhanced regional cancer centres across Australia as part of a $560 million investment to improve access to vital cancer services, including radiotherapy and chemotherapy, much closer to home. We are upgrading BreastScreen Australia’s national network to state-of-the-art digital mammography equipment to screen women for breast cancer; investing $70 million to expand the Garvan St Vincent’s Cancer Centre in Sydney, which will focus on research excellence in cancer care; and supporting up to two dedicated prostate cancer research centres in Melbourne and Brisbane and a children’s cancer centre in Adelaide. We are also funding the McGrath Foundation with $12 million to train, recruit and employ 44 breast cancer nurses and providing financial support for women who require external breast prostheses as a result of breast cancer.

Since taking office the Labor Government have increased funding to the Australian health system by 50 per cent. We will have doubled the amount of GP training places to 1,200 a year by 2014. We are funding 1,000 new training places for nurses every year. We are investing in more hospital beds. We have upgraded more than 35 emergency departments in public hospitals. We have provided more than 850,000 dental checks under the Medicare Teen Dental Plan. We have increased aged-care places by more than 10,000, including 838 new transition care places to help more than 6,200 older Australians leave hospitals sooner each year. This is just a glimpse of our health achievements and we hope to grow and build on these over the next three years for the betterment of all Australians.

Another key achievement of the Labor government and one which is in the midst of being rolled out is the National Broadband Network. We have established the National Broadband Network Company to invest and deliver the $43 billion initiative to deliver faster broadband to 90 per cent of homes and workplaces. The new network will be built on fibre, supplemented by next generation wireless and satellite technology. Australians will experience faster internet of 100 mbps, with the network having a fibre-optic cable connection directly to people’s homes and businesses. This is 100 times faster than speeds many people currently use. The NBN will reach out to those who cannot currently access the internet and will allow an extra 35,000 existing premises attain high-speed broadband. This initiative will not only upgrade our internet infrastructure but will support employment for 25,000 people over the eight years of the project. Stage 1 of the NBN has already been rolled out in Scottsdale, Smithton and Midway Point in Tasmania.

The Labor government has accomplished much since it came into power in November 2007. It will continue to do this and is now preparing to take Australia forward. With a strong economy and a debt which is set to be paid back three years ahead of schedule, a plan for health reform and a boost to internet infrastructure, Australia’s future is prosperous and in good hands.

In conclusion, the writs have now been returned from the Australian Electoral Commission to the Governor-General clearly demonstrating a victory on a two-party preferred outcome to the Australian Labor Party. Of course forming government would not have been possible without the support of Independents Mr Wilkie, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor and Greens MP Mr Bandt. As a government, we have our first elected female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. One good thing about those four people I mentioned that helped to form government is they are committed to maintaining their agreement—an agreement that shall not be broken and ripped up like the example that was provided just yesterday when the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, tore up an agreement that was about delivering an outcome.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy interjecting—

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis interjecting—

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Minister and Senator Brandis! You will have an opportunity to speak. Senator Furner, you have another 43 seconds on the clock.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, it was an agreement that was torn up; it was disingenuous from the outset as a commitment to parliamentary reform which was not delivered as a result of the opposition leader withdrawing from that particular agreement. So we look forward to working with those Independents and those that are genuine about forming a government that is able to deliver on the back of our reforms and outcomes from 2007. We look forward to continuing our past performance to serve this great nation to the best of our ability.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment to the address-in-reply moved by my leader, Senator Abetz. Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, if early indications are any guide—and I fear they will be—this period of minority government, the first minority government Australia has seen in 70 years, will be characterised by three things: by broken promises, by the delegitimisation of the role of the parliament and by a pretence that the last three years of failed Labor government just did not happen.

Most people in this country, I think, are used to the idea that politicians break promises. It is almost a part of the folklore of Australian popular culture. People are quite cynical about us politicians, perhaps more cynical than they should be. But the allegation against all sides of politics—including, if I may say so, Mr Acting Deputy President, the side that you represent, the Greens—that all political parties on occasions break promises is well entrenched in the Australian psyche. It feeds the healthy cynicism that Australians have about politicians in our robust democracy. But I daresay there has never been an occasion even in that somewhat cynical environment in which we have had a Prime Minister recently sworn in by the Governor-General, within days of being sworn in by the Governor-General, announce, as the current Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, announced on the weekend before last, that no promises will necessarily be kept. That is what Ms Gillard said in an interview with the Fairfax papers reported on the weekend before last. Because of what she chose to call the ‘new political environment’, all bets were off.

Mr Acting Deputy President, can you ever remember a time when the first utterance, the first pronouncement, of a newly-commissioned Prime Minister was to announce in advance before she faced the parliament on the first sitting day of the new session that the government would not consider itself to be bound by any of its promises because of what she chose to call the ‘new political environment’? The new political environment is, of course, the environment where a government lost its majority—the first time a first-term Australian government had lost its majority in the House of Representatives since 1931—because it was so hopeless in its first term. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was so wasteful, so profligate with public money. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was responsible for more gross policy failure than the Rudd government with scandals of public administration such as the BER scandal and the pink batts scandal. No government in living memory, not excluding the Whitlam government, was so incompetent in service delivery that it actually put lives and property at risk because of its incompetence. Leaving aside policy courage, it did not even have the moral courage to accept responsibility for its failures.

The government lost its majority. In the words of the member for Lyne, the now famous Mr Rob Oakeshott, it ‘lost its mandate’ and it ‘lost its authority to govern’. If there was ever any doubt about that, it was seen in the Prime Minister’s announcement of a laundry list of essentially housekeeping legislation, legislation largely left over from the 42nd Parliament, which constituted the government’s legislative agenda for the first sittings of the 43rd Parliament.

Newly-elected or re-elected governments are expected to come to the parliament with a series of impressive commitments, with an agenda, with a program. They are expected to say to the Australian people: having been chosen by you, albeit very narrowly, in this minority situation, this is where we want to take Australia. Where does Ms Gillard want to take Australia? It is not to be found in the laundry list of quotidian legislation that she announced last week.

So we looked to the Governor-General’s speech from the chair of the Senate yesterday afternoon to see where the government wants to take Australia, and with all due respect to Her Excellency the Governor-General, who of course is not the author of that speech, it was just another Hawker Britton script. It had no substance, no hard commitments, no vision, no program, no agenda. So that is where this government is heading. It is heading forward blindly, not sure where it wants to take the country, but sure of one thing: any promises that were made during the election are considered by the Prime Minister no longer to apply because of the so-called new political environment.

But there is one thing that we do know for sure about this government: the one solemn commitment that was made by the Prime Minister that there would be no carbon tax has already been broken. It has already been vacated. Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, I know that you and the political party whom you represent have always been believers in a form of carbon tax. We can have a principled difference of opinion about that, as we did in the last parliament. But at least you have to say about the Greens that they do not walk one side of the street before the election and walk on the other side of the street after the election, as the Australian Labor Party has done.

Let me put on the record some of the unequivocal commitments that the Prime Minister gave—and I can see Senator Conroy hanging his head in shame. On the Friday before the election Ms Gillard said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

It was unequivocal. There were no ifs, buts or maybes. There were no qualifications or weasel words. She said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

On The 7.30 Report on 12 August the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Wayne Swan, was equally unequivocal and equally emphatic. In answer to a question from Kerry O’Brien about whether there would be a carbon tax, he said:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

On 16 August, five days before the election, on Channel 10 Ms Gillard stated:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

There is no nuance there or qualifications. It is emphatic. It is unambiguous. Those commitments were made by the Prime Minister and by the Deputy Prime Minister in the weeks and days before the election.

In all the miasma of spin, that was one of the few sharp points of clarity. There was a lot of woolly language and a lot of waffle, but that was something the Prime Minister was prepared to nail her colours to the mast on loud and clear: ‘There will be no carbon tax.’ Even after the election the Prime Minister said in the period when she was negotiating with the Independents: ‘There will be no carbon tax.’ So this is not just a pre-election promise; it is a post-election promise. Ms Gillard will go down in the history books for many reasons—the first female Prime Minister and the first Prime Minister to ascend to office having stabbed in the back a newly elected Prime Minister chosen by the people. All the various markers Ms Gillard has established in the history books will be supplemented by another. Ms Gillard will become the first Prime Minister not just to break a pre-election promise but to break a pre-election promise and a post-election promise in one fell swoop.

Since the deal with some of the Independents in the House of Representatives was struck and since the Labor-Greens alliance was struck Ms Gillard and her ministers have busied themselves inoculating public opinion against the objection to a carbon tax. They have been trying to soften public opinion so that these sharp, unequivocal, firm commitments are forgotten about. Down the memory hole they go, as George Orwell wrote in 1984. It will next be a thought crime to suggest for a moment that Ms Gillard ever promised there would not be a carbon tax. She said to Phillip Coorey in an interview with the Fairfax press the weekend before last: ‘In the new political environment all bets are off.’

Anybody who heard Mr Combet, for example, the person who has been given ministerial responsibility for this area, in his interview on the AM program on Monday this week would have smelt the rat. They would have heard Mr Combet trying to soften public opinion for what is now described as a carbon price. When you hear the Labor Party talk about a carbon price you know what they are talking about; they are talking about a carbon tax.

Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, you may possess more knowledge of these matters than any humble member of the opposition. You of course are a member of the political party that negotiated this secret deal with the government. We do not know what the secret covenants are of this treaty between the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens but we do know that your political party has always and in a principled way committed itself to a carbon tax. We also know that the taxation of carbon was one of the issues that were the subject of the Labor-Greens alliance. We are now seeing Labor politicians—for example, Mr Combet, on the AM program on Monday morning—starting to inoculate public opinion to get them ready for the idea that there will be a carbon tax.

The Prime Minister is an artful politician. Our Prime Minister is very deft with the dagger, as the member for Chisholm discovered only yesterday, as the member for Griffith discovered on the evening of 23 June and as no doubt the bodies of other Labor Party operatives littered throughout the western suburbs of Melbourne discovered over the years. Our Prime Minister is a very deft and ruthless political operator. She has the excuse ready. We heard it the weekend before last: this is a new political environment and all bets are off. There can be no assurance that any promise will be kept.

Let us look at other areas. During the election campaign the Prime Minister committed herself to taking effective measures to stop the influx of asylum seekers arriving by boat. I know Senator Cash is very interested in this area because she has shadow ministerial responsibility now for this area. I beg the indulgence of the Senate to interpolate my congratulations to her on her recent promotion.

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

The poor refugees now.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You will keep, Senator Cameron. The commitment during the election campaign was to establish a regional processing centre in East Timor. We then learned that at the time that that announcement was made there had been no discussion with the Prime Minister or any member of the government of East Timor at all. There had been a glancing reference to the possibility in a telephone conversation with the ceremonial head of state of East Timor. That was exposed. It was then exposed that there had been no planning or preparation for such a regional processing centre and it dawned on the Australian people very swiftly that this was just another political slogan, another piece of political spin.

I waited in vain yesterday as I sat through the Governor-General’s speech from the chair for some reference to a policy to deal with asylum seekers—a problem that the Labor government created and which Ms Gillard promised during the election campaign to fix—and I heard one sentence which addressed the issue. This is the government’s policy to stop the influx of asylum seekers penetrating our maritime borders:

On the issue of border protection, the government seeks to remove the incentive for asylum seekers to undertake dangerous sea voyages to Australia while promoting an approach to assessing refugee claims that is efficient, timely and fair.

That is the plan. You could almost hear those people smugglers shuddering in their boots all the way across in Sumatra as they heard the announcement of the government’s plan to destroy their business, to destroy their livelihood—this traffic in human misery that puts lives at risk. What does the record show? The record shows this: since the election itself—and let us remember the election was only a mere month or so ago, on 21 August—there have been another 510 unlawful arrivals in Australia on 10 vessels. To put that into context, in the seven years between the time when the Howard government tightened the policies and eliminated the problem in 2001 and the time in 2008 when the Labor government weakened the policies and reinvented the problem there were 441 arrivals. There were 441 arrivals in seven years. There have been 510 arrivals in four weeks. So much for the promise to address this issue.

I want to close on what was bound to be one of the themes, one of the mantras, of this government. It is again, in Orwellian language, an attempt to delegitimise the role of the parliament. We have heard it from Mr Combet. We have heard it from the Prime Minister. We heard it only this morning from Dr Craig Emerson on the ABC radio show with Madonna King I debate him on every Wednesday morning. The allegation is that the coalition is opposing a consensus. This word ‘consensus’ is the new weasel word, because if you have a consensus then what it means is that everybody agrees with everybody else. Well, Mr Acting Deputy President, let me tell you: we do not agree with many of the government’s proposals. We do not agree with maintaining a weak asylum seeker policy. We do not agree with a carbon tax. We do not agree with a mining tax. These are sharp and distinct differences. There is no consensus and there should not be a consensus.

We are not going to be wreckers in this new parliament; we are going to oppose what we regard as being inimical to the national interest. I am going to let you in on a secret, Mr Acting Deputy President: we have a cunning plan. We have a very cunning strategy, and it is this: where we agree with the government’s bills we will vote for them and where we disagree with the government’s bills we will vote against them. That is the plan. In the meantime the Prime Minister and her ministers and her talking heads like Senator Conroy over there—after an election in which almost exactly 50 per cent of the country voted one way and almost exactly 50 per cent of the country voted the other way—seek to delegitimise a difference of principle and a difference of policy. It is our role in this parliament—it is our role in the House of Representatives no less than it is our role in the Senate—for the opposition to oppose measures where we consider that to be in the national interest. No genuine democrat is afraid of a vigorous parliament, but this government is already foreshadowing its extreme sensitivity to vigorous parliamentary debate.

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

I would like to take this opportunity in my first contribution to the 43rd Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Ngunawal people, their elders past and present. I am pleased and honoured to be a member of the 43rd Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia and a member of the Gillard government. It is good to be back to hear Senator Brandis giving his political analysis in nearly the same poor way and with the same lack of substance as his legal analysis that he gave to his party—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To himself.

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

To himself, yes, he gave it to himself. The Governor-General outlined an ambitious program for the 43rd Parliament, including parliamentary reform, building a stronger economy, continuing to build our education systems, developing a fair and resilient society, building regional Australia, dealing with climate change and sustainability and ensuring a whole-of-government approach to national security and international relations. This is a program that is designed to deliver a fairer society, a better society and a good society. This program builds on the responsible and effective work undertaken by Labor in government during the 42nd Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Many significant achievements contributed to moving on from over a decade of lost opportunities under the Howard government.

The Labor government met the challenge of the global financial crisis head on and avoided a recession by underpinning 210,000 jobs with expansionary fiscal policies. This was at a time when Tony Abbott was saying, ‘Do nothing. We shouldn’t move. We should wait and see what happens.’ What did we end up doing? We created half a million jobs, while the other 23 countries in the OECD shed 60 million jobs. We successfully implemented the nation’s biggest school-building program. We provided $800 million for community infrastructure projects around regional and local communities. We implemented a $5.6 billion social housing initiative—the biggest commitment by any government in Australia to social housing. We delivered tax relief to families worth $46.7 billion. We introduced Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme. We invested $4.4 billion over four years to increase the child care tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. We set the budget on track to be back to surplus by 2013, a year sooner than expected, keeping the economy strong and spending under control. We have funded 3,000 new nurse training places every year and will have an additional 1,300 GPs qualified or in training by 2015. We started rolling out trade training centres to deal with the skill shortages that the Howard government could never deal with.

Despite setbacks, we kept working to address climate change, with major investments in renewable energy technologies. We increased the age pension by more than $100 a fortnight for singles and $76 for couples. We invested in new cancer research and treatment centres around the country. We set in train investment in much needed public infrastructure like highways, rails and ports—the area of infrastructure that was ignored by the Howard government. We commenced building a national broadband network to make Australian businesses more competitive and provide domestic consumers with access to world-class broadband. Senator Conroy, you are to be congratulated on that approach, which clearly exposed the opposition for their failure to bring this country into the 21st century on broadband. We moved to create 130,000 new education training places and 50,000 university places. We developed a single national school curriculum and we stood up for Australians to ensure that the powerful mining companies paid a fair price for access to our resources. We will have $10.5 billion to fund cuts to company tax, increases in superannuation and increased investment in infrastructure.

The Labor government achieved this while maintaining our national debt at amongst the lowest of advanced countries. Our debt is the equivalent of earning $100,000 a year and borrowing $6,000. Interest rates continue to be 2.25 per cent lower than when John Howard left office. We currently have interest rates of 4.5 per cent, compared to 6.75 per cent at the end of the Howard government. Despite these achievements, we failed to articulate effectively the benefits of our policies to the Australian public. In addition, we were not prepared for a breakdown in the political consensus on climate change and the failure of the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, to take on the extremists in his party and take them with him on the need to act on global warming and climate change. We paid a heavy political price for these failures. We now have an opportunity and an obligation to redress these issues.

Before I move to the specifics of the government’s legislative program, it is important to understand that the myth of coalition economic superiority is simply that—a myth. Very late in the election campaign we learnt that the coalition had fudged its costings to the tune of $11 billion. Was it any wonder that they did not want anyone in the bureaucracy to subject their promises to any scrutiny? There are a few journalists who work in this building who are widely respected. One of them is Laura Tingle of the Australian Financial Review. On 3 September, in an unkind but very accurate assessment of the coalition’s economic competency under the headline ‘Liars and clunkheads fail budget test’ Ms Tingle concluded that the coalition, whatever the reasons behind the $11 billion hole in its election commitments, ‘are not fit to govern’. How right she was. The day before the article appeared, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, described the appearance of evidence about the coalition’s fudged election costings as, ‘an arcane argument about costings’, as if it had absolutely nothing to do with the coalition’s credibility—or lack of it—on economic management. We have now seen the result of that. We have seen the Robb-Hockey split. We have seen that under that veneer of the coalition binding together it is really like a volcano ready to blow apart. The Robb-Hockey split is one indication of that.

During the decade of lost opportunities under Howard Australia, Australia became the victim of many failures of the Liberal economic program. There was a failure of investment, with business reinvesting less than two-thirds of their profits. Business investment fell significantly under the Howard government and, as we all know, investment is essential to increase profitability and employment opportunities. There was a failure of innovation, with Australia ranking extremely low in research and development investment compared to other OECD countries. There was a failure of productivity. Despite the extremist attack on workers’ wages and conditions through Work Choices productivity declined, as the real drivers of improved productive performance are not about ripping away workers’ rights. There was a failure of development, with elaborately transformed manufacturing exports declining from approximately 23.5 per cent in 1996 to 17.5 per cent in 2007. There was a failure of competitiveness, with our net foreign investment deficit as a percent of GDP increasing from around 42 per cent in 1990 to 57 per cent in 2006.

There was a failure of balance, with Work Choices designed to deliberately skew national income from workers to business. Under Howard and Abbott, workers’ wage share declined by $30 billion per year while profits increased by $42 billion per year. There was a failure of balance. Despite the surpluses created by the mining boom, the public sector did not meet its long-term investment needs. Public fixed investment as a percentage of GDP declined from just over six per cent in 1990 to under four per cent in 2006. This resulted in an underinvestment in public facilities and infrastructure that Labor is determined to fix.

The biggest failure was a failure of sustainability. The resource-intensive nature of Australian development cannot last forever. This is now recognised by business and some in the Liberal Party, including Mr Turnbull. These are issues of economic failure from the Howard government that constrained the real capacities of the Australian economy. The Howard-Abbott government squandered the mining boom jackpot by failing to address the long-term growth and investment issues that create demand, build jobs and improve technology and productivity. The transformation of our economy demands improved competitiveness, increased balance and sustainability, and government involvement to deal with market failure and conservative government incompetence. The government’s policies are designed to improve private fixed investment, increase research and development and innovation, build public infrastructure, improve human capital through increased skills and knowledge and deal with the issues of environmental sustainability.

The Labor government have demonstrated that we have met the challenge of the global financial crisis; we must now meet the sustainability challenge. We must set about providing investment certainty in Australia and encourage the mass of private and public investment that is required to ensure that we are not left behind when the world moves to a smaller carbon footprint. The coalition has demonstrated that they are not prepared to act in the national interest and deal effectively with the economic and environmental challenges faced by this country.

Labor will continue to meet the economic challenges outlined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in his recent visit to Australia. These include recovering from the global financial crisis, addressing global imbalances, creating a more stable global financial system, creating a new global reserve system, creating a new global financial regulatory system, addressing the problems of global warming and devising a better system of global governance. If we do not deal with these issues, it will not be the billionaires and millionaires in Australia who will suffer the consequences; it will be ordinary working families battling to put food on the table and educate their kids who will face the problems of further global financial crisis. So it is absolutely essential that we deal with that. Professor Stiglitz identified some of the key problems in the international economy. He argued that before the crisis global growth was supported by bubbles, the largest in the United States. Financial innovation had allowed the bubbles to grow bigger and bad assets to be spread around the world.

For all the financial innovation that we read about, this crisis is much like how the crisis of capitalism has played out throughout history—except in the short period after World War II when most countries adopted good financial regulation. There was a mistaken view that markets were self-correcting. Markets were working at first because of good regulation, but then after deregulation it was because governments repeatedly bailed the markets out. This led to a view that regulations were not needed. Appointments were made of regulators who did not believe in regulation. The bubbles allowed everyone to live beyond their means. Governments have become used to spending fee income generated by the bubble.

It is clear that the Australian Labor government acted in a timely, targeted and temporary manner that has resulted in an economy and a view of our economic management that is the envy of the world. Despite the impacts of the global recession, Australia’s economy remains in a much stronger position than the economies of comparable countries. Faced with a choice between protecting jobs and businesses or slashing services and cutting taxes that would entrench a structural deficit, the government made the decision to put jobs first. The global recession had a big impact on economies and budgets around the world, and the final budget outcome recently announced by the Treasurer reflects that, but, thanks to the successful and timely delivery of Labor policies during the global financial crisis and the consequent recession and thanks to the fact that the government has stuck to its strict spending limits, we are on track to get the budget back to surplus in 2012-13, well ahead of every other major advanced economy.

It is a very different story in the United States—the United States that we were told for years by the coalition is the model that we should follow. They continue to face high unemployment. On 20 October the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee officially declared the US recession the longest in the post-war period. The US recession lasted 18 months and saw GDP contract by 4.1 per cent, making it not only the longest but also the deepest post-war recession. US unemployment continued to rise even after economic growth turned the corner, as tends to be the practice during recessions. The unemployment rate peaked in October at 10.1 per cent and in the 10 months since has only fallen 0.5 of a percentage point.

It could get even worse for America due to the emergence of the Tea Party movement, whose leaders are now advising the coalition in this country. The Tea Party, or at least those who seek to lead it, is made up of dangerous right-wing radicals whose leaders have deep roots in American fascism. It is a movement dedicated to disabling the democratic state and replacing it with an undemocratic corporate plutocracy. Mr. Grover Norquist, a leader of the Tea Party movement—or at least a senior advisor to them—and President of Americans for Tax Reform, a front group for the wealthy elite in the US, has come here arguing that we should seek exemption from paying taxes. He was in Canberra on Monday for meetings with members of the Liberal Party. If Mr Norquist’s interview with Leigh Sales on Lateline the other evening is anything to go by, we can expect the coalition to take on board advice to cut income and capital gains taxes for the super rich, privatise Australia Post and a host of other government services, and dismantle Australia’s superannuation system and turn it over to the merchant bankers and stockbrokers, placing at risk the retirement savings of working people. And that would just be the start for a Tea Party type coalition in this country. Here in Australia, while we face challenges of our own, we do not need an antipodean tea party to help us along.

In addition to the economic challenges, we still face the implications of man-made carbon pollution. The overwhelming view of climate scientists, including the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, is that human-induced global warming is real and presents huge challenges to the sustainability of our planet. I am sure we will hear from Senator Joyce all the fear campaigns and all the nonsense that he is famous for in politics in this country.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike you, Douggie!

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

And we will hear him ranting and raving about a big new tax. But what we will not hear Senator Joyce talking about is the future for our kids and our country, because Senator Joyce does not care about the future of our kids, our economy and our environment. Senator Joyce wants simply to be a mouth in the media running all the fear campaigns and tactics for the coalition. That is what Senator Joyce is about, and you will hear him go on and on in an almost incomprehensible manner, I guarantee. (Time expired).

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am going to reflect on what the Governor-General actually said the other day, rather than go on with some spurious rant as my good friend and colleague Senator Cameron just did, and try to transcribe the reality of what was handed to the Governor-General to read out and what is actually happening.

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

Senator Cameron interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first place we should start while you are still in the chamber is with the wondrous event where Australia is going to go down the path of investing part of $43 billion to roll out a program that did not even start with a cost-benefit analysis. I note that the key placement of the speech was the NBN. The NBN is a wondrous thing—the largest infrastructure program in Australia—but the first question one has to ask is: what price are we prepared to pay for this? Everybody would love broadband, but at what price? What price do you want to put on it? How much more money do you want this crowd to borrow from the Chinese? How much more money do you want this crowd to borrow from the people of the Middle East? How much more money do you want our nation to borrow so that we can build something that a lot of people do not even really want, already have or have to a lesser degree? This is a complete indulgence. They invested $43 billion without doing a cost-benefit analysis—that is, for those who want further information, they did not work out whether it pays for itself.

Why would they worry about that? After all, it is the Australian people who have to pay the money back. But the cornerstone of the Governor-General’s speech was the money that is going to be spent—money that will be borrowed from overseas and then spent on a dubious project which has the possibility of being out of date before it is even finished. People say that we will have fibre to every house. No, you will not. You are going to have fibre to houses and areas where there is fibre already. They talk about fibre to schools and fibre to hospitals. We do not need to spend $43 billion on that. There is a complete paucity of involvement in crucial decisions and a lack of financial discipline. Any discussion about coalition costings will pale into insignificance compared with where this debacle is going to end up.

You have to remember that the government that sits behind the building of the NBN is the same government that gave you the Building the Education Revolution for school halls. That is the acumen that will be behind this. They are the same people who managed to burn down 190 houses. They are the same people who gave you a record deficit. They are the same people who now give you record debt. These are the people who are going to build the NBN, and this apparently is the cornerstone of Labor Party policy. In fact, it is the cornerstone that apparently attracted the Independents. So this is it. This is the litmus test, and we will see where this nation goes. Many people ask, ‘Why should we spend $43 billion to download movies more quickly? Is that what we are going to get? What is the actual benefit in my life and in my house of borrowing this money? Even if we do get fibre into my house, what is the actual benefit?’

We read in the paper that people have said, ‘Build me a railway line. Build me a road. Build me something that has a real outcome in my life, an outcome for the aggregate capacity of our nation to produce goods.’ If we build lines to the coalfields, if we build lines to deliver wheat, if we build lines for greater intercapital connectivity by rail and by road, we increase the productive capacity of this nation. But you have to ask a serious question: what is this $43 billion investment in upgrading a telephone line going to do for the country? What is the involvement of the incremental increase in speed in the economy?

The other question you have to ask is: why are you putting in this request for the Christmas tree when you do not have the money, when you actually have to go overseas and borrow it? The final question you have to ask yourself is: how much more money do you want to owe to the Chinese? You have to pay it back. They are not giving it to you. How much more money do you want to owe to people in the Middle East? You have to pay them back. God help you if you cannot pay them back. If you had a bad bank manager, that would pale into insignificance compared to not being able to pay back the people that this nation is borrowing this money from.

That was one of the cornerstones and we also heard about this new Parramatta to Epping railway line. I am always fascinated about the Parramatta to Epping railway line because I found out that the first time that they promised it was in 1823. They have been promising it ever since and back out it has come. When in doubt, promise the Parramatta to Epping railway line. Will it get built? No, it will not. What we have to do in this term of parliament is actually put the Labor Party’s hands on the hot plate and see whether they actually do any of these things that they are supposed to do.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Nash interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They promised the inland rail. It sounds great. That is definitely coalition policy. We want the inland rail to go from Gladstone right down to Melbourne but then it comes down to reading the fine print at the bottom. It will be built—wait for it—by 2030. The reality is that there will be many people in this chamber not only who will not be in politics but whose mortal coil will have descended the pearly vale to the choir invisible by the time that railway line is built. These are the sorts of promises that you get from the Labor Party. We have an NBN that is the biggest infrastructure project so that you can download movies more quickly—that is not even costed. We have a promise for a railway line first promised in 1823 and a promise for another railway line that they are not going to build until 2030. These people have a job coming their way at a second-hand car dealership on the Parramatta Road. I can see it. Cash for clunkers—they have evolved into that game. These are the sorts of experiences that we are going to have in this term of the Labor government.

They also talked about building regional Australia. I have the greatest respect for the Governor-General, but I do have a sense that these are not her words—they might have been handed to her. They talked about developing a housing policy for regional Australia but then we have to read the fine print—it is only for cities of over 30,000 people. In Queensland there is not one city of 30,000 people off the coast. They were going to develop a regional housing program in one of their regional cities which was called the Gold Coast. Five hundred thousand people live in this regional town called the Gold Coast and Minister Burke said it was to help fly-in fly-out workers. Where were they flying in and flying out from?

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bribie Island.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bribie Island to the Gold Coast. The other depressed regional town that they were helping out was called the Sunshine Coast. So we have the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast and it just goes on because part of their regional policy at this moment is the redevelopment of an airstrip in this depressed little regional town called Perth. Four hundred and eighty million dollars is coming out of their regional development budget to develop an airport in Perth. That airport well may need to be developed, but I think you have a little bit of a hide to call Perth a regional town. I think it has probably evolved a little bit beyond bucolic kitsch. I think it would be fair enough to say that Perth is a substantial city and should be nominated as such. But these are the sorts of intricacies that we have and examples of the duplicitous nature that the Labor Party will purvey in this parliament. What we must do is to hold them to these ridiculous promises and really shine a light on them. We want to say to the Australian people—especially, to be honest, to those who supported the Labor Party in attaining government—that if we get to the end of this term and the inland rail has not been built, did they keep their promise? If we get to the end of this term and see what has happened to the NBN—how did that promise go?

The promise that I am really fascinated with is the one that says you will bring the budget into surplus. I have to see it to believe this one. It is going to be a ripper. Just in the last week, your gross debt went up by $4 billion. You now owe $160.9 billion at a federal government level. We read in the papers that the states, which have predominantly state Labor governments—Western Australia has been good, but the state Labor governments are hopeless—are going to get to $240 billion in debt. This peak debt is marching on its way. Even under your own estimates—and you are always wrong—you say it is going to peak at $210 billion. You have your $210 billion that you owe to the Chinese and to the people in the Middle East—people all around the world that have to be repaid. You have the debt that the state Labor governments owe to people all around the world and you have to start adding these numbers up. Because the state Labor governments in their many guises are absolutely hopeless with money they are saying to the local governments, ‘If you want something, you have to borrow the money.’ Now we are seeing the local governments’ debts marching ahead. This is all a house of cards that the Labor Party has created and does so every time.

They are hopeless when it comes to managing the books. Then they try with the guile, cunning and sleekness that would be splendid in any flying carpet salesman to say that they are good economic managers. We have a party who, to be honest, started with $58 billion in gross debt and who have now taken it to $160.9 billion in gross debt and whose state governments are marching out to $240 billion in gross debt, which they have to repay, and they say that this apparently is good economic management. We will take this government back to core themes about their capacity, when they talk about a surplus, to actually deliver it.

I will tell you why I am sceptical about it. The year that just passed was supposed to have a $17 billion surplus. We actually had a $57 billion deficit, so they kind of missed the mark just a fraction. The second biggest deficit in our nation’s history is the one we are in right now. You have to remember that, even if we did get to a surplus, a surplus does not mean you have paid back your debt; it just means that you have a little bit of money available to pay back your debt. For instance, if they talk about a billion-dollar surplus—or maybe it is a $2 billion surplus, but let us say we have a billion-dollar surplus—and we still have our $210 billion in gross debt, how many hundreds of years do you want to hang around to pay it off?

They say, ‘You’ve got to talk about net debt.’ It is always about net debt. They never actually explain to you exactly how they get to their net debt number. They can say, ‘Even though our gross debt will be $210 billion, our net debt’s only going to be $90 billion.’ That is splendid. Explain to me the difference between the two numbers. Explain to me how you have got from $210 billion back down to $90 billion—a difference of $120 billion. How did you do it? It becomes very difficult. They say, ‘You plough your way through Senate estimates and you find out that there’s $30 billion in cash reserves in the Future Fund.’ We always thought that the cash reserves in the Future Fund were to cover the liability that is out there for public servants’ superannuation—$120 billion in liabilities there. But no: apparently they are saying that if needed it will pay off the debt. Then we have the $16 billion in HECS. Good luck collecting that! You will be going up every gully around Nimbin and around every pub trying to get the money out of the students to pay back their loans. I do not think you will get it overnight. It might take a while, and you would have to put a contingency on whether you get it at all, or at least a large portion of it.

Then there is the big one, a question put on notice at the last estimates and still not answered. We found that, in going from $210 billion—it was actually larger at that point, $220 billion—back down to $90 billion, they had $75 billion nominated as—wait for it—‘other’. There was $75 billion worth of ‘others’. I always get worried about ‘others’. As an accountant, I have found rats, mice and all sorts of pests in ‘other’. But they have $75 billion stacked up in there. I will bet you London to a brick that the day the light really shines on the Labor Party books there is going to be a massive hole in the finances of this nation. Anyway, there is their financial management.

Then, of course, we have come down to the great wonder of our times, climate change. This is the plan where the Labor Party cools the planet from a room in Canberra. It has to be seen to be believed. Yes, it can do it! Penny Wong tried; she had a go at cooling the planet from a room in Canberra. She was there for a little while. She has disappeared now; she is the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. She has evolved to a higher species. ‘We are going to cool this planet from a room in Canberra, and it will be a shared responsibility.’ So look to the heavens and realise that that is about to change, because the Labor Party is going to do it. The way it is going to change the temperature of the globe is with a new tax, because that is how you cool things down. If taxes made things cooler, the place would be an icebox.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’d be freezing.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will be freezing. If Labor Party taxes were going to cool things, this place would be a very frigid chamber indeed. But apparently that is how they are going to cool it this time: it is a new tax. And we have to believe this, because they are very believable people. They are just up the Parramatta Road from Baulkham Hills, and they have a deal for you: they are going to change the temperature of the globe by a new tax.

One might suggest, however crude it is, that they are trying to bring this on because they are trying to dummy up the books. One could suggest that they might be trying to bring this tax in to dummy up the books so that every time you turn on a light you pay the tax to pay for the Labor Party’s paucity of capacity in balancing the nation’s books. That is why you are going to do it. It is not going to cool the globe; it is just because they are desperately in need of a new flow of funds to dummy up their dodgy books. This is the reality we live in.

So we will be engaging with you fervently on making sure that this nation is not going to have this swiftie pulled on it again by the Labor Party. If we have to once more melt down the phones in this building in letting them know which people are going to vote for this ridiculous tax then we will do it. We will go back into action to try and protect Australia from this deceit. I want one person from the Labor Party to stand up and tell me, or tell Australia, how much they intend the temperature of the globe to cool by reason of their new tax. Just tell me that. Is it a degree? Is it part of a degree? Is it 10 degrees? How much is the world going to cool because of the Labor Party’s new tax? This is the premise of the argument: that this is the problem that they are about to solve.

We are going to look at dodgy promises—the fine print about promises that will never be delivered. We are going to look at the absolute stuff-up that the books are in at the moment, which will reflect exactly where our nation is. If you want to know where our nation is, you should go to the Australian Office of Financial Management website, look up ‘Australian government securities outstanding’ and rate them yourself every week. Every week, have a look at how much bigger our debt gets and then ask yourself how you—because it is the Australian people—are going to pay this money back. The way they are going to try and do it is by banging new taxes on you.

We will take the Labor government directly back to where we were prior to this election, with their lack of detail on their finances, their lack of delivery on their promises and the lack of believability in the omens that they put forward. Once more we will be reminding the Australian people that these are the ones who came up with a plan where they were not trying to cool the planet. They were just going to cool your houses, and in the process they did not cool them; they burnt down 190 of them. These are the people who decided that apparently a new school hall at three times the price at the back of your local state school, whether you wanted it or not, was somehow going to bring the world economy back into gear. These are the people who believed that the purchase of a flat screen from South Korea was somehow going to stimulate the Australian economy. These are the people who told you that the reason Australia avoided recession was not the iron ore exports from Western Australia, the coal exports from Queensland or the wheat exports from New South Wales. No, it was the $900 cheques. That is what did it. That is what saved the world. Remember, they said at the start, ‘Go hard, go household, go early.’ They left a couple of things off there. They went hard, they certainly went household, they went early and then they went off their heads and now they are going broke.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly appreciate the opportunity of speaking in this address-in-reply debate to the Governor-General’s opening speech. I particularly wanted to focus on one aspect of the Governor-General’s speech, which was national security. The Governor-General reinforced the government’s most immediate national security priority as being Afghanistan. The Governor-General also pointed out that our nation’s engagement has come at a high price and mentioned that all members of this parliament and government, and Australians, honour the memory of the 21 Australians who lost their lives in Afghanistan.

I was also very pleased to see in the Governor-General’s speech that the government will be introducing a new support scheme, the Simpson program, which of course is named after Australia’s Gallipoli hero John Simpson Kirkpatrick. That program will provide increased assistance, training and access to specialist rehabilitation for our ADF members who have been wounded. I think this increased support for wounded personnel is critically important given that the men and women of Australia’s defence forces face such significant dangers as they go about their critically important work in defence of our nation and national interest.

What I wanted to do in this address-in-reply debate was acknowledge some work that is undertaken by some unsung heroes in the Australian Defence Force, personnel who do their duty for their country in the most sensitive and difficult of circumstances. I have said on many occasions now in this chamber that it has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to serve as Minister for Defence in this country. One of the most important and fulfilling aspects of being Minister for Defence was that I was able to meet so many of our defence personnel who work tirelessly for the nation’s interest. As I said in this chamber yesterday, I have found almost without exception that they conduct themselves with professionalism, dedication and good humour. They do the jobs given to them, without complaint. They endure separation from family. They step into, without complaint, dangerous operations. And they work hard to protect our country’s national interests. But the job also has some sobering aspects. As Minister for Defence, one thing you dread is receiving a call informing you that the life of a soldier has been lost in the course of operations. For a minister, such calls are, as you can imagine, very difficult. But just compare that to the devastating impact on the families of our deployed soldiers. For them, that call, that knock on the door, will be life changing. So the responsibility that any of us feel on such occasions can never match the sorrow and loss felt by the families and friends of those killed in action.

As all senators know, we have recently gone through a very difficult period in Defence. We have now lost 21 soldiers in Afghanistan, 10 of them just in the last few months. As Minister for Defence during that recent period, I have seen Defence carrying out the distressing duty of informing the families of these men and then offering and providing support to those families throughout that difficult period. After yesterday’s condolence motion, I want to take some time today to acknowledge the work of ADF personnel in this area of Defence.

Those men and women who inform the families of our fallen soldiers of the death of their loved one, and who assist the families to cope with the news as best they can, deserve recognition. So today I wanted to place on the record my respect for the work of the notification and bereavement support teams in Defence. These teams are there to provide compassionate support to the next of kin during these difficult and devastating times. Someone from the team is there from the moment the family is informed, and others remain at hand through the periods of grief that every family goes through.

Have no doubt, these must be amongst the most difficult jobs in Defence. Notification teams usually include the soldier’s commanding officer and an Australian Defence Force chaplain, as well as a representative of the member’s unit or workplace if they are able to assist. I am sure that every senator can imagine how difficult it must be to tell someone that a loved one has died. These teams are trained for that task, trained to ensure that they see this difficult process through appropriately. After the first contact from a notification team to the relatives of a deceased ADF member, the ADF provides comprehensive follow-up and ongoing support to the family. With the support of the Defence Community Organisation, the ADF’s bereavement support teams begin to work with the families, providing support for as long as it is needed.

For every family in this terribly difficult position, the time following the death of their loved one, as you can imagine, is just so stressful, just so devastating, just so distressing. Defence social workers help to manage the provision of support, assistance and guidance to the partners and families of our fallen soldiers. These dedicated individuals act as a primary point of contact for the next of kin and family members and help the family in managing their grief and loss.

Defence also provides a uniformed military support officer as part of the team. That officer assists the family on all military aspects of this challenging time, including contact with the soldier’s home unit, assisting with the military funeral and managing the ongoing financial support that families require. They are crucial to providing assistance to families and maintaining their strong connections with Defence during these difficult circumstances.

The work done by the notification and bereavement support teams in Defence deserves our recognition and it deserves our respect. It reminds us that it is not only the ADF personnel out in the field who are performing difficult jobs in support of our operational efforts. I suppose it remains only for me to say that, despite all their good work and all the support and assistance they provide, they of course remain a team we would rather have on perpetual stand-by, rarely, if ever, becoming operational. I am sure I can say this on behalf of all senators: I want to commend them and I want to thank them for their work.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Rudd government got into trouble because it was a bad government. The Gillard government nearly lost the election because Australians were not sure whether it would actually be a better government. The Rudd government was a high-spending, high-taxing, high-borrowing, secretive government full of dishonest spin. Listening to members on the other side this morning when they patted themselves on the back about how wonderful the government was over the last three years, you really wonder why it was that ultimately the Labor caucus came to the conclusion that the government was so bad that they had to execute a first-term Prime Minister. At the end of June, when we last sat, in came Julia Gillard. She conceded that the government had lost its way and said that things would change for the better. But have they? And, more importantly, now that Julia Gillard has scraped back into government, will things change for the better, moving forward?

Let us remind ourselves where the Rudd government lost its way. Having promised that he would lead a government of economic conservatives, Kevin Rudd’s government turned out to be a bad, old-fashioned, old Labor style government. It was a big spending, big taxing and big borrowing government. If it moved, Labor taxed it. This big spending and big taxing agenda did not just start when the global economic downturn hit us; it started right from the word go. Remember the alcopops tax in April 2008, even before Labor’s first budget? There was a 70 per cent hike in the tax on ready-to-drinks. It was dishonestly sold to us as a health measure. It was going to stop binge-drinking. There was a binge-drinking epidemic out there and this tax was going to fix it. With any problem, any challenge, the only way this Labor government thinks it can fix it is through another tax. That was a $3.1 billion tax, and the evidence is now in: it did not work.

We told the government at the time that there was no evidence that this would help reduce at-risk levels of drinking and that in other parts of the world where taxes like this had been tried they had not worked. In fact, Treasury conceded at the time that they were actually assuming that, rather than reducing consumption of alcopops, it would increase, moving forward—which it now has. At-risk levels of drinking of alcopops have continued to increase and Treasury are raking in the benefits, because, of course, this alcopops tax was nothing but a lazy, bad, old-fashioned tax grab.

The next month was Labor’s first budget, in May 2008. We had a $2½ billion tax grab on the North West Shelf gas project in Western Australia; we had the half a billion dollar tax grab on so-called luxury cars—all taxes where Labor thought that politically they could run a line which would make them acceptable to the Australian people. In Labor’s first budget, long before anybody had heard of a GFC, taxes went up by a staggering $20 billion and spending went up by $15 billion in net terms. Yet, despite all that additional revenue, massive reckless spending and waste and mismanagement meant that Labor did not deliver a single surplus budget in the financial years in which they were solely responsible for the management of the books.

Indeed, the last surplus that was delivered at a national level was for the 2007-08 financial year, the year that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan took over from John Howard and Peter Costello halfway through the financial year. That year, we had a surplus of $19.7 billion. What has happened since? There was a $27.1 billion deficit in 2008-09 and a $54.8 billion deficit in 2009-10, with the government patting themselves on the back, saying that this was not a bad deficit to have—the worst deficit we have ever had in the history of the Commonwealth, $54.8 billion. At present we are on track for a projected deficit of $40.7 billion this financial year. It has nothing to do with any significant decline in revenue either, which is one of the lines that those on the other side have been trying to run. Revenue declined by only about $7 billion between 2008-09 and 2009-10. It was all driven by reckless spending, by waste and mismanagement, by things like the school halls fiasco and the handouts, by not properly managing government programs that were running completely out of control.

Then there are the many broken promises we had in the Rudd government era. Private health insurance rebates—remember them? Back in the lead-up to the election, the government promised that they would retain the existing private health insurance rebates. The Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, in the middle of their term, at a time when she was working with her department and Treasury to get rid of the rebate for millions of Australians, was still pretending publicly and telling the Australian people that the Rudd government was committed to retaining those rebates.

Now we have had the student taxes—yet another tax. That was another tax that, before the election, the then Rudd government promised not to impose. Since then, we have seen Labor, true to form, introduce yet another tax, trying to take choice away from students across Australia who do not want to be forced into paying taxes and fees for services they do not need. The government are at it again: they are now in the process of reintroducing that same tax.

There is failure and incompetence everywhere you look: the failure to protect our borders and the changes in government policy which led to an instant and dramatic increase in the number of boat arrivals at our borders; the home insulation fiasco; the school halls fiasco—you name it; wherever you look you see failure and incompetence.

That brings us to, you guessed it, yet another tax: the mining tax. This was of course what got the government into trouble. Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were faced with a political problem in the lead-up to the last election. They had deficit after deficit, and debt was running out of control. Clearly, the levels of deficit were continuing to put upward pressure on our interest rates, so they needed a political fix as they approached the election. They came up with what they described as a $12 billion mining tax—the resource super profits tax. There was no consultation with anyone in the mining industry and no engagement with the states and territories, some of whom were being asked to give away their own revenue streams under the state royalty arrangements. There was no proper process followed at all. It was just a quick political fix which did immediate and incredible damage to our economy, to jobs and, in particular, to states like Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, where things stopped. Even the government realised they had done things wrong. Poor Kevin Rudd has since lost his job. Yet the guy who actually drove the tax, the guy who came up with the scheme, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, not only still has his job; he got promoted. He got promoted to the point where he is now just one execution away from being the next Prime Minister.

I am going to dwell a little on this mining tax, because Her Excellency the Governor-General said in her speech:

… the government will pursue plans … to obtain a more equitable distribution of the nation’s natural wealth through the minerals resource rent tax agreed with our nation’s biggest miners and now the subject of wider consultation.

I regret to advise Her Excellency that the government are not conducting wider consultation in relation to the minerals resource rent tax. Yes, they have negotiated, in secret, a deal with the three biggest mining companies—who were given the opportunity to directly influence the design of that tax, who were able to put their data into the process to help shape the design of that tax and who were given access to government assumptions and government thinking about that tax, which gives them a clear competitive advantage. But 99 per cent of the mining industry was excluded from any of those discussions. To this day, the government are keeping secret and are protecting from public disclosure, as if it were the most important national security related state secret, some very basic information which is critically important for us to be able to scrutinise the actual impact of this mining tax proposal.

I just remind people that after Julia Gillard announced a new mining tax deal on 2 July she said, ‘Oh well, we have reduced the rate, we have increased the threshold at which it will kick in and we have made a whole series of other changes, but the impact on the budget bottom line is just going to be $1½ billion.’ Everybody was surprised—how can that be? Very, very dishonestly, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister failed to advise the Australian people that they had made a whole series of changes in underlying assumptions to achieve that particular outcome.

In fact, if the same assumptions were used for the original resources super profits tax as were used to assess the revenue for the mineral resource rent tax and expanded petroleum resource rent tax, then Kevin Rudd’s original tax would have raised $24 billion rather than $12 billion. Yet the government to this day has not publicly released very basic information in relation to the commodity price assumptions it has used, in relation to the production volume assumptions it has used or in relation to the exchange rate assumptions it has used—information which the state government in Western Australia publishes in its budget papers as a matter of course. This secretive government is refusing to release that information, which is absolutely necessary if we are to properly scrutinise the impact of this massive new tax on mining on the budget, on the economy, on jobs, on investment, on the cost of living and on states like my home state of Western Australia and states like Queensland and New South Wales.

After Julia Gillard became Prime Minister two or three weeks after the election, she asserted how this was going to be a new era of openness and transparency. Because of the new paradigm we were in and given the circumstances in the House of Representatives, she said there would be this new ‘operation sunlight’. In fact, I have heard some of the Independent members of the House of Representatives who are supporting the government use the term ‘operation sunlight’ quite frequently in recent weeks. I had heard that term before. I thought, ‘I am sure I have heard about “operation sunlight” before.’ Madam Deputy President, I am sure you would have heard that term before, too, because the then Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, released this document here in December 2008. Do you know what its title is? You guessed it: Operation Sunlight: enhancing budget transparency. That was in December 2008. It was all talk and no action then and it is all talk and no action now, because if the Gillard government were serious about openness and transparency it would be releasing today information about the assumptions it has used to estimate revenue from the mining tax going forward.

Without the $10½ billion mining tax revenue estimate, the budget would never get into surplus. We have already heard from Access Economics that, at best, there would be one year when the budget goes into surplus. We have already heard that. If the mining tax revenue estimates are not credible, if they are wrong—and we have got a very serious question here as to whether they are credible at all—then there will be no surplus. This whole budget has been built on a house of cards and serious doubt has been raised as to whether this tax would actually raise $10½ billion over the forward estimates. If the government has nothing to hide, why would it not just come clean? Rather than just having all this talk and no action, why would it not come out and release some very basic information that would enable us to assess whether there is any credibility at all in those mining tax revenue estimates. I suggest that, rather than ‘operation sunlight mark 2’, we probably need ‘operation x-ray’. I think we need a different name. We need to move on a bit in the world.

Her Excellency also spoke about the government’s promise to increase the superannuation guarantee levy from nine to 12 per cent, saying that this is to ensure working Australians enjoy greater security in retirement and to considerably boost the nation’s pool of savings. You might recall the government commissioned the Henry tax review. The Henry tax review made a whole series of recommendations in relation to super and it made one specific observation on the proposed increase of the superannuation guarantee levy from nine to 12 per cent, saying that it would hurt low-income working families. We want to know why it is that the Henry tax review came to that conclusion. We want to see the underlying modelling, we want to see the assessments, we want to see the briefing notes that were prepared in order to help the Henry tax review come to that conclusion and we want to see what work the government has done, what Treasury has done, to come up with a different view. We do not think it is right for the government to go ahead with a policy that will hurt low-income working families. Again, if the government has nothing to hide, why does it not release that information? Why does it not come into this chamber today and table all of the modelling and all of the assessments that have been done to assess the impact on low-income working families of the super changes that it is proposing, which are contrary to what was recommended by the Henry tax review?

The Henry tax review was supposed to be this root-and-branch reform of our tax system, making it a fairer and simpler tax system. Really, all we got out of it was just another tax, the mining tax. I say to the Australian people that this is a government that is addicted to tax, to more taxes and to increased taxes because it is addicted to spending, because debt is out of control and because it has lost complete control of our country’s finances. That is why it is looking for yet another opportunity to whack on another tax.

I mentioned earlier how we have had this track record of failure and incompetence over the last three years, and it is well demonstrated. Now we have got former senator Graham Richardson out there today in the Australian telling us that the Prime Minister wanted to sack two ministers because they were incompetent.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only two?

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was surprised myself—Senator Bernardi, that is a very insightful interjection. Even the Prime Minister could see that there were two ministers who deserved to be sacked. But when it came down to making the tough decision they just turned around and blackmailed her. They said, ‘If you sack me, I am leaving the parliament.’

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By-election!

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By-election indeed. This is the one word that puts shivers down Julia Gillard’s spine. It is the one word that will have her drop everything—by-election. Here we have the Prime Minister who, faced with two incompetent ministers she wanted to sack, did not have the courage, the guts, to make the right decision in the national interest. If the Prime Minister cannot have confidence in two of her ministers, how can the Australian people have confidence in those ministers? I dare to make a guess that one of those ministers she wanted to sack would have been Peter Garrett. I am prepared to guess that one of the ministers that she wanted to sack, based on his incompetent handling of the home insulation fiasco, was Peter Garrett, but instead of going ahead with that original decision she gives him control of our schools. I would like to think that on behalf of the Australian people this government will perform better over the next three years than it has done in the past. But looking at the track record so far I do not have a lot of confidence that it will, and this opposition will hold this government to account every single step of the way.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are many ways in which people can judge a government. Some will consider flowery rhetoric as sufficient substitute for meaningful policy. Others will see the appearance of action through reviews, committees and endless paper-shuffling as indications of actually moving forward. Still others will only look at the government’s spend to determine whether the government is doing enough.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney interjecting—

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Strangely, this third group, which Senator Feeney clearly endorses, never seems to consider that the government is actually doing too much, and yet if a government has ever done too much it was the previous government, because the ALP government have made a complete mess of everything they have touched.

However, all of these assessments are subjective. Any criticisms of government on such a basis are easily deflected through political spin and the sheer power of the government PR machine. In considering the agenda of the Gillard government and its previous incarnation as the Rudd-Gillard government, I would prefer to assess its approach and impact on what I would consider to be the foundation pillars of our nation, our first principles, if you will, the values that have shaped our nation and provided us with stability, security and prosperity. These principles can be summarised, I believe, into four key areas.

The first of these is faith. Our nation was established upon the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Our laws have codified these ancient texts and the tenets of the Ten Commandments, and our societal expectations are based around the golden rule of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.

The second of our foundation pillars, I consider, is respect for our flag and what it represents. It is a representation of our sovereignty, our history, our commitment to Federation, our independence and our Constitution, which places clear limits on the power of government, and the encouragement and fostering of the national identity. Indeed it was our founding fathers that sought to encourage patriotism and independence and a national identity for Australians. Alfred Deakin, speaking at the Constitutional Conference in 1890, acknowledged the importance of fostering our national patriotism when he said:

This sentiment of our nationality is one which, I believe, we shall see increasing in its intensity year by year, and it will count for much more than it does now when the people of these colonies have become a people sprung from the soil, a people the vast majority of whom will know no other home than the soil of Australia. I believe that this passion of nationality will widen and deepen and strengthen its tides until they will far more than suffice to float all the burdens that may be placed upon their bosom.

The third of the great pillars of our foundation is family. Strong families build a stronger Australia, and through countless generations the traditional family unit of a father and mother bonded through a commitment to their marriage and to the welfare of their children has proved to be the best and most enduring of all our social institutions. Evidence supports the notion that children raised in strong families go on to be more successful by every measure and also making a strong contribution to the strength of their communities.

The fourth pillar of our foundation is that of free enterprise. Through the commitment to property rights, and through reward for effort and acceptance of the consequence of failure, we have established a nation rich in ideas, effort and innovation. We can no more afford to stifle that enterprise and expect enduring wealth creation than cease to breathe and expect to stay alive. These four pillars represent the foundation of modern Australia. Without an ongoing commitment to their preservation, the freedom of our citizens and the future of our nation are at risk.

It is in these key areas that the Gillard government’s policy agenda is left wanting, devoid of any commitment to the things that matter, preferring instead to deal in an ideological agenda more suited to Cold War central planning than to a free, vibrant and modern nation. While it may be unfashionable in some quarters, I believe that as leaders in our community we have a responsibility not only to foster a strong national economy but also to protect and defend our culture and our national identity.

As I mentioned earlier, a great deal of this cultural identity arises from the Judeo-Christian tradition that lies at the very heart of our nation. While we are a secular country, our laws, our customs and our societal expectations arise from this great tradition and the wise boundaries it places on the human condition. I regret that the Gillard government threatens to undermine this tradition. I am not referring to a lack of personal religious belief by the Prime Minister, although I do make a personal observation that the absence of belief in a greater being is generally replaced by something less than beneficent.

The threat that the Gillard government poses to Christian tradition is in the opening of the door to sharia or Islamic law in Australia. The government and its representatives have repeatedly stated their intention to change the regulations to ensure that there is no restriction or disadvantage to sharia-compliant finance being conducted in Australia. Minister Sherry even launched the demystifying Islamic finance booklet in May this year. During the launch Senator Sherry maintained:

This is not about special treatment but about a fair and level playing field that is not prejudiced against the provision of Shariah compliant products.

Minister, I would suggest we already have a fair and level playing field for all Australians based on our laws and traditions, which are not built on sharia law. Whilst the proposals put forward by the government may not at first glance seem to be truly significant, should they be allowed, the process of legitimising a fundamentalist sharia law as an alternative legal or business system in this country would commence. I believe this simply cannot be allowed to happen.

Whatever the advocates may say, followers cannot simply pick and choose the parts of sharia law that they want to follow. If followers are prepared to ignore some of the less palatable aspects of sharia then certainly they should be expected to ignore the more innocuous ones too. But if the advocates of sharia law truly believe it is the path of righteousness, then the introductory changes like concessions of sharia finance are simply a stepping stone to a greater embrace of this archaic system. That is why we should not entertain any thought of introducing any aspect of sharia law into Australia. At best it is unnecessary; at worst it is a step in a direction that is incompatible with western life and values.

The government’s record and future agenda also threatens to concentrate power in Canberra, while outsourcing aspects of our national sovereignty to unaccountable foreign organisations like the United Nations. This was highlighted by the government’s commitment to a climate change treaty prior to the Copenhagen conference in December last year, which would have seen billions of dollars of Australian taxpayer funds disappear into that fiscal black hole of bureaucracy known as the United Nations.

Our part-time foreign minister—our part-time United Nations climate change advocate and former Prime Minister—is central to the belief that a grand global plan is better than defending our national interest. The Gillard government continues in this vein because it also has plans to concentrate power in Canberra, at the expense of the states, contravening the essence of our Federation that is enshrined in our Constitution and its wise advocacy for the separation of powers.

While I have a personal and philosophical aversion to such a concentration of power, one may be able to apply some justification if the government demonstrated competence in any area of its administration. Regrettably for the Australian people, this is not the case. Yet such a record of failure does not discourage the government from trying to interfere in the lives of more Australians. While the government professes support for the family, its rhetoric simply does not match its practice. Rather than offer practical measures that would strengthen families—like income-tax splitting or incentives for one parent to stay at home with their children for the preschool years—the government is giving incentives for institutionalised child care and undermining the traditional family unit.

It is alarming that the government’s alliance partners, the Greens, have already introduced motions to undermine traditional marriage and further erode the culture of life that should logically elevate humans above all other species. To the Greens, humans are just another one species among many. Their beliefs see their adherents advocating human rights for orangutans but not for unborn children—a clear indication that their moral compass is lost in a Bermuda Triangle of policy extremism. The government’s formal alliance with advocates of such a policy agenda reflects very poorly on it and, unfortunately, legitimises such extremism in our parliament.

The government’s policies will also have a very poor impact on the purses of every family. Not satisfied with blowing the national accounts with excessive spending and imprudent policy formulation and implementation, it now wants to blow the budget of Australian families. Its promise to break its election promise and introduce a carbon tax will see the price of everything rise. Utilities will dramatically increase in cost. Transport costs will rise. The cost of construction materials will rise. In fact, virtually everything we need will increase in price—thanks to a massive new tax.

What makes it worse is that this approach is completely unnecessary. It is based on flawed science and a religious-like fervour that carbon dioxide is somehow the new Lucifer. As I mentioned earlier, the absence of God in one’s life is often replaced by something less beneficial. There can scarcely be any clearer example than the cult-like worship of the Earth Mother practised by the advocates of this great green tax with all its negative implications for our nation.

Unfortunately, the negative consequences for our nation continue with the government’s commitment to undermine free enterprise and a competitive market place. Its punitive mining tax—which was the result of a secretive negotiation excluding 99 per cent of resource companies—changes the game for many Australian mining enterprises and reduces the attractiveness of investing in Australia. It further undermines the rights of our state governments, who actually own the resources, to profit from their extraction and invest the proceeds as they see fit, accountable to their own electorates.

The government’s decision to reinstate a nationalised telecommunications monopoly in the form of the National Broadband Network—a $43 billion expenditure without a business plan—is an example of the reckless misuse of taxpayer funds. There are clear alternatives to the government’s plan that could be implemented more quickly, provide a comparable service and cost a great deal less. Yet Labor persists with a solution that exceeds the requirements of most of us. Of course, such trifling issues as the estimated $5,000 per household connection cost are not as important to Labor and the government as having a big plan that will cost a whole lot of taxpayers’ money—no matter how flawed the cost-benefit analysis.

Like many Australians, I am concerned about the direction that this government is taking. It has a track record of reckless spending and record debt. It cares little for our traditions and enduring values. It cares little for our constitutional protections, national interest and Australian sovereignty. It cares little for strengthening the family culture of life and traditional marriage. It cares little for defending property rights and state rights and fostering a competitive economy built on free enterprise. In short, the government cares little for the pillars that have forged such a great nation—and one can only conclude that it cares little for the people of Australia. And I say to the government that the people will tender their verdict—when they are given the opportunity to do so in the not too distant future—on how little this government cares about the founding principles of our nation.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment that has been moved by Senator Abetz in relation to the speech by the Governor-General, who yesterday in this chamber outlined the plan for the Gillard Labor government in the future. How much can we believe? How much will be delivered? How much will be true? If we look at history we can go back to Mr Rudd. In the 2007 election campaign he said: ‘I’ll fix our hospitals. The buck stops with me and they’ll be fixed by 30 June 2009.’ I could take you around a lot of hospitals in regional New South Wales and the last thing they would say is that all the problems are fixed. We have seen the problems in the Greater Western Area Health Service, from problems with paying accounts to many problems where, unfortunately, regional areas in New South Wales seem to be neglected. That is sad in itself. We seem to have two standards in this nation: one for the urban areas and one for the regional areas. Of course, there are many problems with the health system in urban areas as well. I will not go into detail or my whole speech here will simply be on that.

Mr Rudd said that he would put downward pressure on grocery prices and he introduced Grocery Watch. What a failure that was! It was laughable. A couple of towns I know were mentioned. I looked at the Grocery Watch site for northern New South Wales, where I live. There were some grocery prices for Tamworth and Grafton. Tamworth is about 2½ hours drive from where I live and Grafton is three hours, so what about the places in between? We know Grocery Watch was a waste of millions of dollars. There is no need to expand on that.

We also had the downward pressure on fuel prices, with Fuel Watch. It was the same. It was a farce. And we had the CPRS, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—the greatest moral challenge of our time! Carbon is not a pollutant. You can google a list of pollutants. I challenge anyone listening to go to the web and google ‘list of pollutants’. Carbon is not listed. Why do we have so many people around this place who list carbon as a pollutant? Seventy per cent of the food we eat is carbon; 18 per cent of our body weight is carbon. Everything around us contains carbon! We seem to have this idea that carbon is a pollutant.

In the election of 2007 we heard many promises. Another one from Mr Rudd was: ‘I’ll turn back the boats.’ Have a look at the legacy of those promises and the actions of the government on asylum seekers coming to Australia. This financial year it will cost the taxpayers of Australia more than one billion dollars—a billion dollars that could be going into our aged-care facilities or our health system, our roads or infrastructure, looking after those people who are getting home care through EACH and CACP packages. That is where the billion dollars could be going and should be going—not into asylum seekers, who are sponsors of a boat travel industry run by people overseas. They collect the money from people who pay to come here. This is an industry that has got to be wiped out. But the government has failed dismally when it comes to asylum seekers in this nation.

Then there were the promises of ‘me too’ in the 2007 election campaign. But Mr Rudd was not at the forefront of the 2010 campaign. The so-called faceless men did away with him as Prime Minister. Perhaps that is why many of those people now sit on the front bench of this chamber—so that they cannot put knives in the backs of others. It is safer to have them up the front! It is ironic that those who backed Ms Gillard are seated on the front bench these days. The Prime Minister said, ‘I have more chance of playing full-forward for the Western Bulldogs than challenging Kevin Rudd for the Prime Ministership.’ Well, when the Western Bulldogs beat the Sydney Swans just recently, which was a sad occasion, I did not see Ms Gillard playing full-forward for the Western Bulldogs; I actually saw Barry Hall there.

We can go on about the plans of the government, but let’s look at the track record of what this government has done. Let’s look at the waste of money in Building the Education Revolution. They called it Building the Education Revolution but it was quickly dubbed ‘the builders’ early retirement fund’. There was $16 billion supposedly poured into school projects, but much of it found its way into the pockets of managing contractors and the New South Wales government. The BER task force found that the New South Wales government had the highest overall total percentage of management and design fees in Australia. It was taking out 1.3 per cent in fees. This is in addition to all the other fees being ripped out. Schools were getting halls when they really needed classrooms. They were getting classrooms when they could have done with a canteen. Yet the Catholic and independent schools that managed their own projects got value for money.

On election day I called into Kingstown. Many of you would probably not know where Kingstown is. It is a little town situated between Tamworth and Inverell. There was a school building of about 10 metres by eight metres with a small kitchen in it. It cost $330,000, when $300,000 will build you a very good, large four-bedroom brick veneer home. That is what my son tells me.

Debate interrupted.