Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I do thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. We know that he is completely bored by economics and that his colleagues who served in government with him thought he was such a hopeless joke that he should not even be tolerated as a deputy leader, let alone a leader of a political party. Now we find that the Leader of the Opposition is so hopeless that he is starting to just make things up—absolutely make things up. He is in this parliament spruiking tax increases. He, of course, has made the whole thing up. The tax increase that working families would have faced before this Christmas, had the election result gone differently and had the Leader of the Opposition become Prime Minister, was his paid parental leave tax on companies which would have flowed through to everyday prices, delivered by the Leader of the Opposition almost immediately after he had pledged to the Australian people that he did not believe in increasing taxes.

The person who went to the last election campaign determined to increase tax was the Leader of the Opposition. The person who would have visited a tax increase on Australian working families before Christmas, if he had become Prime Minister, was the Leader of the Opposition. The person who showed that disregard for the circumstances of working families and their cost of living was the Leader of the Opposition. No amount of making up figmentary tax increases from this government, pretending that somehow taxes are being increased and raising fears for families at Christmas time—so no amount of that imagination and delusion from the Leader of the Opposition—is going to change those uncomfortable facts. Then, of course, had the Leader of the Opposition become Prime Minister, we would have seen an $11 billion budget black hole, and the only thing we are yet to determine about that budget black hole is if it is the responsibility of the member for Goldstein, or the responsibility of the shadow Treasurer or the responsibility of the Leader of the Opposition because they all blame each other about where the $11 billion black hole came from—a party that simply cannot add up. Then we have the Leader of the Opposition coming into this place each and every day with his culture of complaint, with his slogans about stopping, ending, wrecking, demolishing. Well, who said these words on 21 September, ‘We are determined to be the party of ideas and of policy innovation’? Believe it or not, it was the Leader of the Opposition. So when you have had an idea let us know, because we have not seen one yet.

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