Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

There could be no better backdrop for this MPI than the arrogant, out-of-touch performance by this government in question time—their absolute determination to be interested in their own affairs and not anyone else’s. The Nationals are particularly to blame. They spend their time longing to be Liberals, when they ought to be standing up for the bush. They should be protecting people like Mrs Annette Harris from the Prime Minister’s AWAs. That AWA, which after all is being offered in one of the government’s constituencies, would see Mrs Harris lose $90 in penalties and get just 2c an hour extra in return. That AWA trashes the conditions that millions of Australians hold dear—the penalty rates they need for their mortgages and the time they need for their families. Of course, in the bush, where there is less freedom of choice when it comes to jobs, these things are all the more important. If workers lose their employment—if they opt not to take the AWA—it virtually means they have to leave town.

This government is divided, this government is distracted and this government is destructive. It is a government that cares more about itself than about Annette Harris and the millions like her who are forced to compete in the Prime Minister’s race to the bottom—the hundreds of other workers of Mount Druitt who now find themselves to be unwilling participants in the Prime Minister’s race to the bottom. Annette Harris deserves better, people in rural Australia deserve better, the workers of Mount Druitt deserve better, middle Australia deserves better from the Howard government and regional Australia deserves better from the National Party. Fair dinkum! This government has been in office 10 years now—how out of touch they are. They are talking about themselves, they are talking about their internals, they are talking about the relationship between the Liberal and National parties and they are talking about nuclear power. They have every conceivable form of elite and internal distraction out there and running. Do they give a darn about what is happening to ordinary Australians? Not one bit of it!

This government is imploding from one of its member’s hatred and contempt for another. We all know about the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, in which the Treasurer sulks with a sense of entitlement and the Prime Minister feels that he is entitled to stay there forever, travel wherever he likes and no longer be accountable to ordinary people in this country. Neither of these two perceptions of the world have much to do with the needs of ordinary Australians, but they have nevertheless got them locked in a death dance of ambition.

Then there are circumstances in which the Deputy Prime Minister finds himself. He is treated with absolute contempt by the Prime Minister—I will get onto that in a minute —and he is treated with absolute contempt by his own party people. He is completely undermined by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry who, I see, is going to speak on this.

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