Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

As the spin of Rudd Labor starts to wear thinner and thinner, we are seeing a government without direction and without substance. No matter which area we look at, we see spin over substance. No longer being able to follow the Howard government’s agenda, they are now looking at over 100 committees and inquiries to give them some direction and some substance.

Mr Rudd, in the lead-up to the last election, promised everyone that they were his No. 1 priority. I thank my Senate colleague Simon Birmingham for his contribution to the public debate, in which he pointed out how often Mr Rudd said a certain group or a certain area of public policy was his No. 1 priority. Just listen to this:

... education ... will be the first priority ...

That was on 23 January last year.

Good economic management is my No. 1 priority.

That was on 11 July last year. Then we have:

Labor’s first priority is the defence and security of our nation ...

That was on 12 November last year. And so it goes on: ‘Inflationary pressures are our No. 1 priority,’ and, ‘Our first priority is to act on climate change,’ and, ‘Cooperative federalism—that’s No. 1 priority for me.’ The list goes on, but what we had was pure spin without commitment and without substance.

I have been advised that a very good test in determining the sincerity of a speaker on TV is to turn off the volume and observe their facial expressions. I invite the Australian people to do that to Mr Rudd, because one characteristic will prevail over all others, and that is insincerity, pure and simple. Nobody who is genuinely sincere could have gone round the country saying to the defence community, ‘You are our No. 1 priority,’ then saying to the environmental community, ‘Climate change is our No. 1 priority,’ then going to education and saying, ‘You’re our No. 1 priority,’ and then, in relation to the states, saying, ‘Cooperative federalism is the No. 1 priority for me.’ What that shows is a man who got away with spin, and spin he did. But after 100 days that spin is now beginning to wear very thin with the Australian people. Indeed, it is now becoming increasingly obvious that he cannot juggle all these No. 1 priorities that I have listed—and, indeed, time does not permit me to go through all of them.

I now move to Mr Rudd’s so-called razor gang, which is going to cut about $600 million out of federal expenditure. We are told that the reason for this is overexpenditure by the Howard government, the previous government. In a desperate attempt to trash the excellent economic credentials of the former Liberal government, Mr Rudd spins the line that we have to have this razor gang. The reality is that Mr Rudd went to the election promising overseas investors a substantial cut in their taxation obligations. He said to the Australian people that he could do that with a cost-neutral impact. When pushed, he said that it might blow out to $15 million. Thank goodness that Peter Costello introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty, because now, after the election, the Charter of Budget Honesty has exposed that this little exercise of cutting the taxation obligations of overseas investors will not be cost-neutral and will cost not $15 million but in excess of $400 million. So the first two-thirds of the cuts made by the razor gang are to cover the absolute debacle of his taxation promise to overseas investors.

What we have here is Mr Rudd yet again spinning and not telling us what the substance of these supposedly needed cuts is. The fact is he made a promise to people, either deliberately or in ignorance of what the consequences would be. If he deliberately did so, he ought be condemned. If he did so ignorantly, I would have thought that a man so strong on saying sorry might be able to say sorry to the Australian people for his error and come clean and say: ‘Look, I made a promise to overseas investors. I mucked up by the sum of $400 million. Therefore, I have to cut the services of Australian men and women to make up for that mistake, because I happen to believe that overseas investors are more important than Australian citizens.’ We will not hear that from Mr Rudd. But I tell those listening in, and Mr Rudd, that we will continue to remind Mr Rudd of that debacle and the fact that the first two-thirds of that razor gang proposal to cut $600 million are needed specifically to cover for his election mistake.

After all these extravagant statements about there not being enough money, we had enough money for a personal child carer for the Prime Minister at taxpayers’ expense—until it was exposed, and then he cut it off. We do have over $1 million for that Tree of Knowledge up in Queensland somewhere that the Labor Party venerate. It is a Labor Party icon. Surely the Labor Party should be paying for that. No way: the taxpayer can fund that, while the government is busy trying to cut the carers’ bonus, the pensioners’ bonus, the baby bonus, the superannuation co-contribution scheme—you name it. Mr Rudd is busy cutting them, allegedly because there is not enough money, but we have enough money for a Labor Party icon in Queensland.

Over the 100 days of the Rudd government thus far we have seen broken promise after broken promise. Indeed, Senator Crossin’s contribution just before my own was a complete and utter wind back of that which Mr Rudd promised in relation to the Northern Territory intervention. He went to the Australian people saying, ‘I stand dovetailed with the Prime Minister; I stand all fours with the Prime Minister on the need for this intervention.’ Yet Senator Crossin says that this is why, allegedly, the Indigenous community voted in a particular way. What Mr Rudd and the Labor Party did was to say to one part of Australia, ‘We stand firm with the Howard government on the Northern Territory intervention,’ and then send people like Senator Crossin into the Indigenous communities spreading another message: that Labor would wind back the intervention. There is another good example of the Rudd government spinning one line to mainstream Australia and backbenchers like Senator Crossin spinning another line to a particular interest group. The Australian people now quite rightly ask: which is the true Mr Rudd? Which is the real Mr Rudd? Some of us are not surprised because, during the election campaign, Mr Garrett exposed what Labor’s plan was: say that they agreed with everything that the then government was doing but after the election change things. That is what we are clearly seeing. Mr Garrett should not have had to eat humble pie during the election campaign. Instead, Mr Rudd should now be saying that in fact Mr Garrett told the truth and everybody else within the Labor Party did not.

We have agreed to limit our comments to 10 minutes, so in conclusion I simply say this: to the 47 per cent of Australians who supported the coalition at the last election, thank you. To those who changed their vote on the strength of Labor’s promises—which were largely to adopt the policies of the Liberal-National Party coalition—I say: we will keep Labor to their promises, especially in this chamber. They are already starting to unravel. As time progresses, we will see even more of that unravelling.