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Monday, 27 February 2012
Page: 794

Senator BUSHBY (Tasmania—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:14): I also rise to take note of ministers' answers as mentioned by Senator Joyce. It was great to hear Senator Stephens today trying to defend the Australian government's record, particularly as it relates to the economy. I did not hear anywhere amongst that contribution references to the great job that Peter Costello and the previous Howard government did in handing over a government that had over $70 billion in the bank and which has now been turned into a situation where we are looking at a gross position of over $200 billion in the red and getting worse every day by about $100 million.

I also did not hear her explain why she voted for Mr Rudd this morning. Does she agree with her colleagues who have made a number of statements about the government? I would like to look at a couple of them. The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, said that Mr Rudd can win an election against opposition leader Tony Abbott and that Ms Gillard cannot. He said that he was:

… supporting him to try and save the Labor Party from itself. It's about trying to work out how we can best position our party to remain in government.

Similarly, Mr Rudd himself said:

If Julia is returned or if I'm elected, then I think it's time for various of the faceless men to lay down the cudgels.

Does Senator Stephens, who was supporting Mr Rudd, agree with these statements? Does she still agree with those perspectives? Does she think it is time for the faceless men to lay down the cudgels? I would have been very interested in hearing that. Has she maybe changed her mind the last couple of hours?

Senator Stephens also talked about the coalition nay-saying. Can I say that over the last week I have never heard so much negativity and nay-saying in politics. Today we had confirmation that almost one-third of the Labor caucus—and that includes Senator Stephens—does not have confidence in the Prime Minister. If you went out and polled Labor supporters around the country, you would probably find that even more than one-third of those Labor supporters would not have confidence in the Prime Minister. Today is the end of the most extraordinary five days in Australian politics, certainly in recent years. It was the peak so far of tensions and divisions that have been building in the Labor Party for months and have at their core the ruthless and efficient removal of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his replacement with the current Prime Minister in June 2010.

As interesting as of all of this theatre is, the great tragedy is that the current government—a government that was put in place with the complicity of rural Independents, particularly and specifically because they thought it would be more stable and more long lived than the coalition alternative—finds its own issues, its own problems, its own internal divisions and its own electoral standing to be more engaging and important to it than the challenges that the nation currently faces. There are real challenges out there, including challenges for small businesses that are trying to make a dollar, trying to employ people and trying to pay them so that they can pay their mortgages. It comes back to the cost of living pressures that Australians are currently facing. But is the government interested in this? No, it is far more interested in spending all its time worrying about its own internal problems—worrying about personality issues and egos within the Labor Party and worrying about who is going to run the party—than worrying about what impact that will have on the needs and the challenges being faced by the Australian people.

Labor say that all of this internal division and infighting has not impacted on the government.

Senator Polley interjecting—

Senator BUSHBY: I hear Senator Polley making interjections along those lines. They say, 'Look at all the legislation that we have passed since we came in,' and they point to all these new acts that have passed. Most of that legislation was non-controversial. It was passed with the full support of the coalition and it is legislation that we would have put up if we had been in government and which would have been supported by Labor. The vast majority of it passed without any issue. There were bits and pieces here and there, but on the whole it would have been very similar if we had been in government. Those that have not been non-controversial or have not gone through with bipartisan support are largely bills that were passed as a result of dirty deals that were done with the Independents and the Greens to get government.

Two of those in particular were bills which were passed despite specific promises before the 2007 and 2010 elections that they would not be. Of course, I am talking about the carbon tax, about which the current Prime Minister—even after this morning—went to the last election, hand on heart, saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Yet she introduced one. Now they are going around saying it is one of their main achievements. Similarly, there was the slashing of the private health rebate. Before the 2007 election they said, 'We will not touch it; we won't do a thing'. Now they have. They have broken another promise, and they say that is another one of their great achievements. (Time expired)