Download Fragment

Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Page: 7781

Senator CAMERON (New South Wales) (16:08): At least Senator Abetz had the honesty to smile when he was doing that. He actually knew that this was so much rubbish that he was going on with. If you talk about incapacity to govern competently, I think the record holders in that were the Howard government. The Howard government set a big benchmark on incompetence, the incompetence of Howard and Costello, the ongoing fight between Howard and Costello. You can imagine Peter Costello going back to his staff and saying, 'Look, Little Johnny won't let me become Prime Minister.' And what did he do? He walked away from politics because he had no internal fortitude. He could not take John Howard on, he could not deliver decent economic policy, and what did he do? He just allowed John Howard to conduct a spendathon when he was in government, an absolute spendathon. There was no economic credibility, in my view, from the Howard government.

It is an absolute myth that the Howard government were economically competent. You only have to go back and have a look at the exposure that was done on John Howard and Peter Costello by Peter Hartcher. What did Peter Costello say to Peter Hartcher? He said, 'I had big fights with Howard all the time'—not just some fights but he had fights all the time with John Howard. He went on to say, 'As the party of low taxes, I thought we ought to keep the ratio of taxes to GDP low.' He might have thought that but he did not have the backbone to actually force that position through as the Treasurer. 'My view was always that cutting taxes was more important than new spending. This would be a point of argument and contention between the two of us,' he said. So here you have the so-called dream team, John Howard and Peter Costello, arguing and fighting all the time, an absolute crisis of leadership contin­ually in the Howard government, a crisis of leadership between the two senior Liberals in government, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister.

What did they deliver? They delivered nothing. A spendathon is what they delivered. Peter Costello said that he had to give in—

Senator Ian Macdonald: Mr Deputy President, I raise a point of order on relevance. I know we are allowed very wide parameters for these debates, but the subject we are discussing is the Gillard government's incapacity to govern competently as it lurches from crisis to crisis. I do not think Senator Cameron is aware of the subject of the day. He is talking about things completely foreign to the matter before the chamber.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I remind Senator Cameron of the topic we are discussing.

Senator CAMERON: The topic I am discussing is a crisis in the Howard government. You have an accusation of crisis against the Gillard government. I am entitled to go back and talk about the crisis that was an ongoing crisis in the Howard government, and that was the incapacity of the then Prime Minister and Treasurer to get on with each other. That was a crisis, and we saw that crisis in the Howard government played out many times.

In 2001 when Costello was arguing that they should be fiscally competent, John Howard broke all previous records with $26 billion worth of new spending. It was simply spending to try and buy votes. He topped that with a new record in 2004 with $66 billion of new spending. Then he set a new record in 2007 that would be an all-time record of new spending, $128 billion, including election promises. The crisis for the Howard govern­ment was that Peter Costello did not have the courage, the capacity or the backbone to put a stop to this. So I will not be lectured by the coalition about any crisis when there was an ongoing crisis in the Howard government and that crisis was a crisis of leadership, a crisis of economic competence and a crisis that meant that this country did not take the steps that were required to deal with the big emerging environmental and economic issues that it faced.

There was no infrastructure investment. We had a crisis under the Howard govern­ment of infrastructure investment. Time and time again they were warned by the Productivity Commission, they were warned by government departments and they were warned by Engineers Australia that we had to build infrastructure in this country to take advantage of our natural resources. The crisis continued and there was no spending on infrastructure.

There was a crisis in education. It took the Labor government to fund decent infrastructure in education in this country. The Labor government had to do that. In the seat of Macquarie you see some of the schools where they had outside toilets, freezing toilets, old toilets, 100-year-old toilets still being used. The Howard government did absolutely nothing about that. Under the Howard government, there was a crisis in manufacturing. When the Howard government took over, elaborately transformed manufactures were growing. When the Howard government finished, manufacturing jobs were in rapid decline and free trade agreements were being signed with the US, putting our manufacturing industry under challenge.

The Howard government failed dismally to deal with climate change and you can see why they failed to deal with climate change—it was because people like Senator Macdonald did not believe in climate change. People like Senator Macdonald are climate change deniers.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Senator CAMERON: He can deny that all he likes. If you look at the record of Senator Macdonald, not only on the floor of this house but at inquiries and at Senate estimates, you will see that he is a climate change denier.

Senator Ian Macdonald: On a point of order, Mr President: is there any provision in this chamber to stop a senator telling deliberate lies which he knows are deliberate lies? I have always acknowledged climate change exists—and it has for 20 million years, Senator Cameron.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Macdonald, that is a debating point and you will need to withdraw the comment 'deliberate lie'.

Senator Ian Macdonald: I will withdraw because you have ordered me to, Mr Deputy President, but what Senator Cameron said was a deliberate untruth.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Cameron, I remind you of the topic under discussion in the chamber today.

Senator CAMERON: I repeat, Mr Deputy President, that the topic is about governments and that the topic is about crises. The Howard government's failure to deal with climate change demonstrates a crisis of competence in that government. That is directly on topic and it is directly to the point. You cannot have a position where the coalition come in here, run all their spurious arguments and then, when faced with some home truths about their lack of capacity to deal with some of the bigger economic and environmental issues, get up and bleat like stuck pigs, saying, 'You cannot raise those issues.' I will be raising those issues. They are directly on point and they go directly to the issue of competence.

The Howard government were incompetent in dealing with workers. What was their approach on workers? We see a crisis in the coalition now because some of them want to continue Work Choices. The member for Moncrieff, Steve Ciobo, is down there arguing to go back to Work Choices and Senator Abetz is trying to paper that over. The big crisis is not a government crisis; the big crisis is the lack of direction, the lack of vision and the lack of policy on the opposite side. We know that the member for Moncrieff is standing over Senator Abetz, trying to get a hardline, right-wing industrial policy in place. We know that is the crisis, the battle, which is going on within the coalition and we know who will eventually win, because we know that the hardliners, the right wingers, in the coalition want to create another crisis. They want to create another crisis for working families in this country by implementing Work Choices once more. We know that is the battle that is on and we know that is where it is all heading. So I will not be lectured by the coalition about crises; I will not be lectured by them for one minute.

What have the big crises been? There have been two crises which, from my perspective, are worth talking about today. One crisis was the global financial crisis. During the global financial crisis, what did the coalition have to say? They tried to pretend it was not happening. They called it 'the North American crisis' as if it were not a problem, as if we did not have to bail the banks out here and underpin them to maintain confidence in the financial system. The coalition thought things would go ahead. They said, 'We will just wait and see what happens.' If ever there were a crisis of competence, that was one. When the International Monetary Fund, when the OECD, when the Treasury and when the Reserve Bank were all saying, 'We have to stimulate the economy; we have to make sure we keep people in work,' what did the Labor Party do? We stimulated the economy and we kept 210,000 Australians in jobs. That kept rural communities and regional communities going. It kept people in work. We were not prepared to do what the coalition wanted to do—wait and see what would happen and end up in a major recession, if not a depression. We fixed that. Our record in facing crises is there for people to see. We take action and we actually deliver on jobs in this country.

What is the other crisis? The other crisis, they say, is Qantas. We heard Senator Abetz wax lyrical about Qantas. I do not mind if the coalition want to stand up, day in and day out, defending big business and defending Qantas—who showed absolutely no interest in looking after the travelling public, who treated the travelling public with contempt and who simply closed their business down and left Australians and international passengers stranded all over the world. If that is what the coalition want to defend, I am not surprised. We know they are the party of big business, we know they are the party which sucks up to big business, we know they are the party which does not want the big mining companies to pay one extra cent and we know they are the party which wants to give $10 billion back to Gina Rinehart, Twiggy Forrest, Anglo American, BHP and Rio Tinto. They want to give $10 billion back to the mining companies when the rest of the country is struggling. We want to deal with the crisis of the patchwork economy by making sure that everybody gets a fair go. And what do the coalition want to do? They want to give $10 billion back to some of the richest, most powerful companies not only in the country but in the whole world. BHP and Rio Tinto are saying, 'We are prepared to pay.' What an absolute joke these people are.

We know a crisis is on in the coalition, because we know that the Nationals do not like the Liberals, we know the Liberals do not like the Nationals and we know the Liberals do not like each other. It is all being papered over at the moment, but it is all ready to burst out like a big boil. And it will happen. Mark my words: it will happen. The crisis is one of competence in the coalition—a massive crisis of competence. They are just completely incompetent.

When we acted decisively on looking after working people in this country, when we got rid of Work Choices, what did they do? They said, 'Well, you had better look at giving more flexibility to the employers.' I have been around the industrial relations scene for a long time and I know what flexibility for employers is—it is getting rid of workers' penalty rates, their shift allowances and their annual leave loading, and making sure that they work any hours the boss wants. That is where this lot want to go. Make no mistake about it, if there is ever a coalition government again Work Choices is back. It is not a crisis of government then; it is a crisis for working people. They are the party of big business. They are the party of sucking up to big business, taking the money off big business for their election campaigns and delivering in spades to big business at the expense of ordinary working people in this country. They are an absolute disgrace and they absolutely have a hide to come here and talk about any crisis in a government that looks after working people in this country.