Sat, 23rd February 2008

Backflips, broken promises and a culture of secrecy

Senator the Hon Eric Abetz
Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate
Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research

The past week’s hearings of Senate Estimates hearings has exposed a Labor Government full of back-flips, broken promises, and a culture of secrecy, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz, said today.

“Opposition Senators have exposed backflips on issues such as the Prime Minister’s tax-payer funded nanny, and a plethora of broken promises on issues including the Prime Ministerial Code of Conduct, school laptops, the River Murray and Tasmanian hospital funds”, Senator Abetz said.

“We have also seen what the Rudd era of “openness” really means: it means Labor Ministers refusing to answer even the most basic of questions; refusing point-blank to answer questions on behalf of Ministers they represent in the House of Representatives, and gagging Departmental officials from revealing even the most basic of information.

“We have seen the embarrassing situation of Labor Chairs of Senate Committees seeking to intervene and defend Ministers from the hard questions.

“And above all, we’ve seen a Government patently unable to implement its election promises trying to hide its obvious failings.

“Despite all this, probing questioning from Opposition Senators forced the revelation of information on a large number of issues, including (but not limited to):

Brian Burke

DFAT officials confirmed that that Prime Minister Rudd had indeed been “stuffed around” by DFAT in the lead up to his now notorious planned dinner with Brian Burke on 12 December 2005. DFAT Deputy Secretary Doug Chester told the Committee: “Looking through the paperwork one could understand why Mr Rudd or staff from his office may have felt there were some difficulties in the organisation, or the organisational aspects of getting to Hong Kong”.

This throws huge doubt over the Prime Minister’s claim that he made up such organisational difficulties in order to get out of his dinner with Mr Burke.

Ministerial Code of Conduct

The Ministerial Code of Conduct is not worth the paper it is not yet written on. Neither Senator Evans representing the Prime Minister, nor PM&C officials, could adequately define a number of key items in the draft Code of Ministerial Ethics, confirming it is all spin and no substance.

No implementation date could be given for either the promised Code of Conduct nor the much-vaunted Lobbyist Register.

Childcare

While preaching frugalness to the people of Australia, the Prime Minster was caught out as having secretly added a baby-sitter to his personal staff at the expense of the tax-payer.

The Opposition embarrassed him into repaying past costs and committing to personally cover the cost of this service in the future.

Staff – Prime Minister’s central control

The Prime Minister has a higher proportion of Ministerial staff in his office – already more than 12 percent – compared to the former Prime Minister who had just nine percent of ministerial staff in his office, even after 11 years in office.

Hospital funds – broken promise in Tasmania

Despite a promise from both the Prime Minister and the Labor Member for Braddon, Sid Sidebottom, that: ‘all savings from the Mersey Hospital takeover[will] be spent in the North West and Northern Tasmania’’, it was revealed that Federal Labor will allow $8 million of the $45 saved from the Commonwealth takeover of the Mersey Hospital to be diverted to southern Tasmania.

River Murray

It was revealed that the Rudd Labor Government had broken election commitments in relation to the National Plan for Water Security to the tune of at least $85 million, after Water Minister Penny Wong told a Senate committee that despite an election commitment to bring forward to 2007-08 an additional $100 million on the National Plan for Water Security, just $15 million had been allocated this financial year.

Whaling

It was revealed that the diversion of the Oceanic Viking to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet cost over $1.2 million.

Worse, despite releasing emotive pictures to the media, the Government doesn’t even know if the whaling occurred in Australia’s Antarctic waters nor what course of legal action to take.

And in a stunning admission, it was confirmed there is no specific Minister in charge of the whaling issue.

As a result of the Oceanic Viking’s diversion, Australia’s southern ocean exclusive economic waters around McDonald and Herd Islands have been unguarded from toothfish poachers since the 8th January – and still are.

Grants rorts – pork barrelling

It was revealed that Labor has committed to funding three projects in Victoria totalling $5.75 million against the direct advice of the Department. This directly contradicts the Prime Ministers edict that no project shall be funded against Departmental advice.

Industrial relations

Labor refused to guarantee that no worker will be worse off as a result of their industrial relations changes – the same demand they made of the former Prime Minister.

Industry – Steve Bracks

It was revealed that Steve Bracks was approached about chairing Industry Minister Kim Carr’s automotive industry inquiry in December 2007, and that his appointment was endorsed by the Prime Minister.

This casts further doubt on the claims of the Minister and Treasurer in Parliament on Wednesday 13th February when they denied that Mr Bracks was to be appointed to chair the Review.

Minster Carr refused to deny that the Government had sought legal advice about, and that the Strategic Budget Committee of Cabinet had considered, axing the remainder of the Ford Australia assistance package in Geelong.

Defence contradictions

Despite claims by Labor to the contrary, Defence officials confirmed that Defence is 100 percent supportive of the Super Hornet aircraft purchase, and that cancelling the purchase will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Again in direct contradiction of claims by the Defence Minister, Mr Fitzgibbon, according to Defence officials, Australia has always had access to the required information in order to make fully informed operational decisions in Afghanistan.

Education promises broken

Labor has broken their promise of “a laptop to every school student” and it has now been watered down to “access to every laptop for school students”.

It was confirmed that Labor has axed the vital “Investing in Our Schools” program which provided vital capital works funds to schools starved of funds by Labor State Governments.

Roads policy in disarray

Officials and the Minister at the table, Senator Conroy, refused to even discuss any of Labor’s plethora of pre-election, Australia-wide road funding promises.

In the case of Tasmania at least, officials revealed that discussions with Tasmania officials over implementing these promises had not even begun!

Efficiency Dividend, cut programs and broken promises

A plethora of broken promises, secretly axed programs and the drastic impact of Labor’s 2 percent so-called “efficiency dividend” on the ability of Government Departments to do their job were unearthed right across the full gamut of Ministerial portfolios.