Page 3544 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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“some emerging points of agreement”. So we have got emerging points of agreement between—
Mr Barr: Because their policies moved to align with ours.
MR SESELJA: Apparently not, but there were “some emerging points of agreement”. If you go far enough to the left I am sure you will catch up with them. We know that what the Labor Party say and what they do is different, and we can see them blaming the Greens for having to abolish the private health rebate. Remember, they opposed the private health rebate as well. So we have got the Labor Party who always philosophically opposed it and the Greens who have said they will abolish it. When you do the numbers, if the Greens and the Labor Party have the majority between them after the next election, if there is a Labor government—so a majority in the House of Representatives and a Labor-Greens majority in the Senate—I am backing that some of these policies will get through.
We will see the 30 per cent health rebate slashed, with 55 per cent of Canberra families seeing their fees go up 30 per cent. As for funding to non-government schools, Ms Gillard was part of that shadow cabinet that had the hit list. Philosophically, it does not seem a big move when, even in this election, they have flipped and flopped as to exactly how long they will guarantee funding into the future. They have had to move on that at the last minute as well.
It is right that we are concerned about that. We know that Bob Brown will not be able to get every one of his policies and there has been a level of pretending. It was put to him again that there would not be a vote in the Senate on issues around the public service and he could not refute it. So the Greens are pretending they are going to do something about the public service when they are not. There are areas where they are pretending they are going to do something that they cannot and there are areas where they are pretending they are not going to do something when their policy specifically says that they will.
This is the sort of back and forth that we have seen again today. We heard earlier today that the Greens have never used this 30,000 figure: “No, no, no, we didn’t use that lie. That lie was used by other people. We just backed it up.” Of course, Senator Brown again used it today. He used the lie. He referred to the lie. Even the Australia Institute put a completely different figure on it. On this issue perhaps we have to have some scepticism when we look at the board of directors of the Australia Institute. They are making an argument in favour of Lin Hatfield Dodds.
Who is on the board of the Australia Institute, Madam Assistant Speaker? Let us have a think about it. There is Sharan Burrow, who is from the ACTU, who backed the 30,000 figure. Who else is on there? There is the chief of staff to Senator Bob Brown and there is a Senate candidate called Lin Hatfield Dodds. We have got the Greens in here today saying that we should take seriously these numbers, and these are much lower numbers than the lie that was repeated again by Senator Brown. They are much lower numbers, but even these numbers cannot be trusted because we are being asked to say on behalf of the Greens’ Senate candidate that an organisation she is on the board of has come out with figures that back up her argument.
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