Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (16:34): The proposition before the chamber today is to reflect upon the first hundred days of the new Turnbull government since the last election. This is an interesting concept for us to consider given the government's fortunes have fallen so dramatically even after their crushing electoral fiasco that we saw in July. We know that this is a Prime Minister who has been very keen to tell us ad nauseam that we live in the 'most exciting times'. Do you remember that? These are the 'most exciting times' this country has ever seen. These are the most agile times this country has ever seen—times in which we should be brimming with confidence. The unfortunate fact of life is that the electorate, the public, the Australian people do not feel very excited about this government. They do not feel that is a very agile government. They do not think that this is a government that has many opportunities before it. What we have seen is that this is a government that is weak, it is directionless and it is in fact captive of the most extreme right-wing elements of the coalition in this country. We know that a coalition of town and country capital in this parliament over the years has enjoyed quite a wide range of opinions and differences, as you would expect in a great political organisation like the coalition has been since Menzies created it in the late forties. But never have we seen a period of government dominated by the IPA and the allies of the most extreme right-wing, quasi-fascist organisations in this country. Even the once great National Party has fallen into this. They are now pandering to One Nation. Isn't that an extraordinary proposition? Do you remember Ron Boswell? He used to stand up to One Nation because he understood the consequences of pandering to these extreme right-wing, racist and xenophobic views, but what we see, of course, under this coalition is that anything goes. Why has that happened? It is because this is a government that has lost its authority. It has lost its legitimacy. It has lost its sense of direction. This is a Prime Minister who just over a year ago was elected by the Liberal Party 54 votes to—was it 44? Remember, in the polls at that time, there was the sense that they could roll all before them. Now what has happened? There has been a disastrous election result and a disastrous political strategy to adopt changes to the Senate, aided and abetted by the Greens—I accept that. This is a reasonable criticism to make. We have seen an election result in which this government effectively lost its majority, a Senate transformed and a government now obliged to follow a much more conservative direction. Some people might think that is great. But that is not what this Prime Minister made his name for, is it? Throughout his time in public life—and this is why I think so many people had such hopes for him last year—he has presented himself as a progressive, a person who is actually interested in the Enlightenment! For many people on the other side of this chamber, the Enlightenment is a very dangerous thing. In fact, they are having a lot of trouble even catching up with the very principle of it. We have met many of them in the past for whom the reading of books, for instance, was something they frowned upon! But now we have circumstances where those from the Dark Ages have come to dominate this government. Senator Paterson: Just your books, Kim! Senator KIM CARR: You would learn something from my books, I must say. In fact, you might learn a great deal. What I would suggest is this: the Prime Minister has mortgaged himself to the extreme right wing of the Liberal Party and, worse still, the extreme right wing of the National Party to get the keys to the Lodge. This is a mortgage that he now finds crippling. And that is now showing up in the public's attitude to this government. The people of this country, who had such high hopes and high expectations about what Mr Turnbull would bring to the job, have now been thoroughly disappointed. In fact, I think they are quite horrified. He is a man who has presented himself as being an ideas person. In the past, he was interested in an Australian republic, for instance. He has abandoned that. He is a person who said he was interested in equality before the law in terms of same-sex marriage and the like. He has abandoned that. Remember that he said they could never tolerate Tony Abbott's climate change policies—because they were fraudulent. Many years ago now, he made the point that it was a policy position that would not produce the changes we actually need to protect this country. But now, of course, he adopts it holus bolus. We have seen this in so many areas—a government divided, a government weak, a government directionless, a government that has no central commitment to the welfare of the Australian people—because the government's only obsession now is survival. We have talked a lot about how they recovered from the disaster of the election result. What we know is that, in two years time, we will be at it again—because they cannot sustain the internal contradictions of this government. Given this Prime Minister's position in terms of popular attitudes he will either be rolled or he will be obliged to go to an early election. We know the circumstances in terms of when a writ is supposed to be issued for this chamber. We know that that circumstance means we have to have another election by 2019. If we are to maintain the joint proposition of House elections being held at the same time as Senate elections, an election for the Parliament of Australia will occur again in the early part of 2019 at the very latest. But, of course, we know that there is a New South Wales election at that time, so it is unlikely that the election will be occurring at the same time. It is very unlikely, though technically possible, that we will have an election over the summer period, in January. We could have it just before Christmas. That is possible but unlikely. Senator McALLISTER: And unpopular. Senator KIM CARR: It has never worked before. We could have it in November, but there is a Victorian election then. So we get pushed back a little further. We know we cannot hold an election for the Senate until 4 August. And we cannot let the football finals get in the way of any serious discussion with the Australian people. So sometime between August 4 and maybe the second week of the finals we will have another election. On the very best calculation, this government has less than two years to run. This government is so badly divided it may be possible for it to find a way to resolve this contradiction by having a House election only. Just think of the chaos that would bring with it—the idea of Senate elections being held on their own! I do not see that as a likelihood. So it is likely that around Spring 2018 we will be off to an election again. The Australian people will get a chance to assess the performance of the government in that time. We will see a Prime Minister who promised much deliver very little. With a government so badly divided, so directionless, so lacking in authority and legitimacy, we are likely to see the return of a Labor government. The Labor Party will be called upon to deal with problems that you will be unable to deal with, that you are incapable of dealing with, because of the divisions within your own ranks, your lack of commitment to principle and your failure to understand the needs of the Australian people. While we are committed to serving the Australian people, you are committed to trying to work out the conflicts within your own house—and a house divided will inevitably fall. Senator BACK: I spent a good deal of my professional career in the horseracing industry. Do you know what I see when I look opposite at the Labor senators and others? I see owners who could not buy a horse but could win a race, trainers who cannot train a vine up a toilet wall and jockeys who do not know where the finishing line is. The fact of the matter is that this mob over here cannot win. They resent bitterly the fact that they cannot win. They resent the fact that we are a winning team on a winning horse that is kicking on over the next three years, the three years after that and, following that, the three years after that. We will have all of that victory. That is where the coalition finds itself. I can tell you: we will continue to whip home the winners, so let me get started. The omnibus bill saves $6 billion, with support from the Labor Party, I must admit. But just remember: Mr Ken Henry, the then secretary of the Treasury, now the head of the National Bank, said, 'Don't get too proud of yourselves, boys, because you've actually got $350 billion to wind back.' And whose debt was it that we are winding back, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, to Senator Williams? You know, Senator Williams; you know, Senator Paterson. It is the $350 billion that Labor squandered in raising debt in this country. Only today—talk about success; I need nine hours, not nine minutes—have we made a major tax saving for 3.1 million taxpayers in Australia by changing the rate at which they get to the maximum tax rate. There are 3.1 million people better off today as a result of the hundred days of this government. We go then to Medicare. I will not today explain in any great detail what a losing jockey does when he is that far behind the field in getting towards the finishing line. He comes up with every scare campaign he can. In the case of the election, it was called 'Mediscare'. And, of course, with 'Mediscare' we were going to end up selling Medicare. There was going to be no financial support for the aged people of Australia. How that party over there could have got to the finishing line, well behind, of course, as they were, and then go to chairman of stewards and say to him, 'We were honest in this campaign'! They should have been rubbed out for five years. Speaking of Senator Carr going on about how we did, Senator Carr did not tell you, in the gallery, through you, Acting Deputy President, that the Labor Party had its second-lowest performance in its history in the 2016 election. So do not get too worried about the performance of the Turnbull government. But let's talk a little bit about Medicare and bulk-billing. Under this government, led by Mr Abbott and now Mr Turnbull—the last hundred days we are talking about in detail—85 per cent of bulk-billing is undertaken. What was the figure under Labor—the mob who reckoned that we were engaging in 'Mediscare'? Seventy-nine per cent. Isn't it amazing? Less than 85 per cent. More importantly, under this government, with the confidence that we have of being owned and trained and ridden by our excellent leadership, we have 17 million more people using bulk-billing. Isn't that an incredible thing for what is apparently called 'Mediscare'? Pharmaceutical benefits—what have we done with the excellent minister, Minister Susan Ley? We have more than three times the number of pharmaceuticals now registered in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. If that is failure, I will own it. I will own that failure every time. As of 1 October 2016—I think that fits within the hundred-day envelope, doesn't it, Senator Paterson, through you, Acting Deputy President; I think 1 October fits in—another 2,000 medicines have been included in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, reducing the cost by millions of dollars to the Australian taxpayers, who I hope are listening to this presentation this afternoon. Our defence industry plan brings defence manufacturing back to Australia. Excellent work will go on in Western Australia. And, if ever the South Australians get rid of their Labor government, get rid of their nonsensical attitude to their renewable energy electricity, which sends their state into darkness, they will have some chance of spending $50 billion on new submarines. Most likely, they will end up being built also in Western Australia. I could go on for the entire nine minutes about what we are doing in defence industry: new submarines, new air warfare destroyers, new offshore platform vessels et cetera. I could speak about the free trade agreements which we are negotiating at the moment with 11 other countries—the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Forty per cent of the world's economy is tied up in those 12 countries. This, of course, is after the apparent failure—I would call it the immense success—of then trade minister Andrew Robb, now being undertaken in this hundred days by Minister Steve Ciobo, the trade minister. Free trade agreements with a few miserly little countries: China, Korea, Japan. Do not know much about them. Senator Lambie interjecting— Senator BACK: I will talk to you one day, Senator Lambie, about free trade agreements. You understand nothing about the investor dispute-state service. I will explain it to you one day in simple terms so you too can understand it. We come now to the work of Senator Birmingham and what he has been doing in reversing the shocking Labor failure under VET FEE-HELP. I sat—Acting Deputy President Ketter, before you were in the Senate—in the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee and I said at that time in those committees, 'You will set up another pink batts disaster. You will set up another Gillard memorial halls disaster.' And we have seen the wastage of billions of taxpayers' dollars on VET FEE-HELP, which of course Senator Birmingham—in the hundred days that was the subject of this question from Senator Gallagher—is now trying to wind back. He is winding back that corrupt loss. When I talk about people who cannot buy a horse, train a horse or ride a horse, the Labor opposition fits right into that analogy. In my own industry, that associated with livestock, I look at the strength of livestock prices—beef prices, sheepmeat prices, live animal prices—as a result of this coalition government. Remember, we came off a pretty low base, I must admit. That was after Labor in government banned the live export trade and destroyed the live export of sheep and cattle out of this country. So I do admit we are coming off a low base. There is tremendous confidence now in the agricultural industries of this country as a result of the decisions of our coalition government. There is employment in Australia through processing, through live exports, through production. Senator Williams knows as well as I do the tremendous investment that is now going back into agriculture. I will talk about another industry with which I am wonderfully familiar, and that is LNG. We have failed so badly that in 2018-19 we will go past Qatar as the biggest exporter of LNG in the world. I was in the country of Azerbaijan only two weeks ago and they were saying to us, 'Look at what you in Australia have done.' Chevron and their partners—US$100 billion of investment. Is that some failure? You call it failure; I do not. Only yesterday, we had the first cargo of liquefied natural gas from the second of the two 4½ million tonnes per annum projects out of Gladstone. What wonderful performance we have had in that industry! Again, in only the last couple of days, Senator Paterson—through you, Acting Deputy President—there has been a whole stack of new interest in the sale of and increased pricing for coking coal. And for those who get concerned about coal: no, it is not the thermal coal that produces electricity; it is the best quality coal in the world, which is used for steel production. I hope that even those who are opposed to the generation of electricity from hydrocarbons at least recognise that we do need steel. It has been 800 days without a single person coming to Australia through that shocking trade of people smuggling. How much longer can I go on for? I am proud to be on the horse that is going to win the Melbourne Cup year after year after year.