Senator SHERRY (Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate)(3.13 p.m.) —We are debating the very serious issue of broken promises of Mr Howard and Mr Costello. I want to read again to the Senate the commitment that the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, gave before the election in the context of whatever the budget deficit would be after the election. When Mr Howard was asked what he would be doing if we was confronted with the choice between breaking election promises and running a budget deficit, he said, `Oh, look, I've made it clear. I'm not going to break any promises.' This assurance was given by the Prime Minister before the election in the context of being asked what he would do if the budget deficit was bigger once he won the election, if he won that election.

Mr Howard and Mr Costello have clearly deceived the Australian people. In future, when anyone asks the Prime Minister or Mr Costello, `What is your commitment? What is your promise?', they will have to make sure they ask, `Is it a non-core commitment or is it a core commitment?' Because since the election all we have had is a backtrack on promises and commitments by covering it up by saying, `We've got core promises and non-core promises.'

When we challenged the opposition today to give us an example of a non-core promise, all they could talk about was core promises but they could not give one example of a non-core promise. I would like to give to the Senate today a number of examples of major non-core promises or broken promises or betrayal—of which there are 27—in the budget that was handed down last night.

I would like to go through a number of the promises, some of which were announced before the budget was handed down last night. What about the ABC? We all recall the commitment given to maintain ABC funding. We all recall Senator Alston's declaration on election night; we all recall him giving assurances after the Liberal Party was elected that ABC funding would be maintained and we all recall that dreadful performance on the 7.30 Report three or four weeks ago when Senator Alston maintained that the promise that was given could be expected to last only until the budget; that is, it was a five-month, non-core promise. That was what the promise to maintain funding to the ABC was all about.

What about the arts? They said they would maintain arts spending and provide an additional $60 million over three years. What happened to the Australia Council? Funding was cut by $16 million over four years. I see Senator Boswell looking a little intrigued. He spent the last six months defending a core promise to ensure that the diesel fuel rebate was not cut back. Senator Boswell, you spent the last six months defending a clear commitment. You may have saved it, but how does it deliver one additional dollar to people in the bush? Have a look at the budget papers and that core promise you got—$200 million over four years off the diesel fuel rebate.

We will be interested to see how you defend the change to the diesel fuel rebate when we get details in this Senate of that cutback and how hard you fight to protect people in the bush. It is about time the National Party stopped being the doormat of the Liberal Party. You have rolled over time and time again. There is not one dollar in additional funding to the bush in this budget. Where is it? Where is the statement in Senator Short's speech referring to the rural sector? There is not one word about the rural sector, about country Australia, in the budget speech.

I will go on with some more of these so-called non-core promises. What about education? I don't really need to say a lot about that. That promise was dropped to the tune of $2 billion, two weeks before the budget—another non-core promise that was abandoned despite solemn guarantees given by those opposite as they walked around campuses before the election, protesting that we were alleging they were going to break their commitment to higher education. What happened two weeks ago? Billions were cut out of higher education.(Time expired)