MARK DREYFUS MP

Making the right choices goes right to the core of the attorney-general's responsibility to maintain the integrity of our legal system. It is right that those who hold that office are held to account for these choices.

Abbott and his attorney general should learn something from the fate of the Newman government and immediately abandon their attack on the rights of Australians and the rule of law.

Australia wants governments with the ability to weather criticism with dignity, that have the integrity not to attack those institutions we have put deliberately beyond their control. Abbott and his ministers should be ashamed of themselves.

The vast majority of the Australian public have made it clear that they utterly reject Brandis' deeply misguided views about bigotry in public debate.

Australians from all sides of politics should be proud of the principled position our nation has taken against commercial whaling, a position we have fought for since the time of Prime Ministers Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. And Australians from all sides of politics should be proud that with this legal victory we have brought an end to Japan's whaling program - a program that has killed over 10,000 whales under the guise of scientific research.

Not only we do finish 2011 as a modern prosperous power, but we have a vision for future growth, and the policies to get us there.

For the first time, all of the world's major emitters, including the US and China, have committed to take on legal obligations to reduce carbon pollution.

Australians deserve the right to scrutinise the $70 billion in cuts the opposition is proposing and we shouldn't and won’t accept anything less.

We have come to expect bleating and screeching from this opposition, but this level of nonsense and invention needs to be corrected.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and the Liberals have made it clear that they will oppose every government policy - lobbing everything they've got at us by way of attack.