Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Let me simply remind the House of the poor language, the entirely unworthy language, that the Leader of the Opposition has been using consistently across the table over the last six months. In fact, as any fair-minded observer of this House would know, the Leader of the Opposition maintains a constant barrage of schoolyard chatter across the ministerial table. Some of it is picked up in Hansard, but much of it is not. Yesterday, for instance, he even said of the Prime Minister, ‘Turn your hearing aids up, you old man.’ Frankly, this is completely unworthy of someone who is the alternative Prime Minister of this country.

I have been a student of the Leader of the Opposition for much of his long and not undistinguished public life. I would say of the Leader of the Opposition that he is intelligent and articulate. He was, in some respects, one of the more competent ministers in the former government. But he has badly let himself down in the 18 months since he has resumed the leadership of the opposition. He has sold out his intellectual principles with things like the AWA rollover. AWAs were good enough for him in his previous incarnation but, because the unions said no, he sold out his intellectual principles in the last fortnight. He has sold out his personal principles for much of the 18 months that he has been Leader of the Opposition in this second coming. The kind of childish, juvenile interjections that we are consistently getting from the Leader of the Opposition are the strongest possible proof of that.

Even many of the Leader of the Opposition’s own supporters realise that he is far from his best self at this time. The Australian people used to regard the Leader of the Opposition as decent but indecisive. After watching him over the last 18 months, they are entitled to conclude that the Leader of the Opposition is both shrill and easily bullied. He is a lesser man today than he was 18 months ago. The very worst thing about it is that he is not only a lesser man but a man who has been less true to himself—his real self—in the last 18 months than in previous parts of his career. He has let himself down. He has tried to be what he is not because he has been told by the pollsters that there has to be more ‘muscle-up’. He has been told by the union heavies that he has to ‘show more mongrel’. That is what he is trying to do. In the process, he is disillusioning the Australian people about himself and not doing his political prospects any real good.

Members opposite often get upset when I quote back at them the words of their former leader, the former member for Werriwa. But it is interesting, isn’t it, that the only time members opposite had to judge between the member for Brand, their current leader, and the former member for Werriwa, their former leader, they chose the former member for Werriwa? We all know that the former member for Werriwa had many grave faults. There must even be many members opposite who privately breathed an enormous sigh of relief that the former member for Werriwa never became Prime Minister of this country. He might have been rough, he might have been wrong in many respects, but he had a few clues about the Leader of the Opposition. The longer the Leader of the Opposition lasts in his current incarnation, the more the judgment of the former Leader of the Opposition about him seems right. Listen to this about the current Leader of the Opposition, from page 112 of The Latham Diaries:

... putting a tough surface on a blancmange is bound to backfire. What they should do is pick an issue ... A big, bellowing cow in Parliament will never fool the public.

Another quote, from page 87:

People think Beazley is a big angel, but behind the scenes, he’s in the gutter. He and his allies reflect the worst instincts of the Labor movement: all gossip and muck.

We have seen far too much gossip and muck from the Leader of the Opposition over the last six months across this ministerial table. We have seen the Leader of the Opposition attempting to give his political persona some definition with his frantic and hysterical campaign against AWAs. All we can say is that we might know a few of the things he is against, but we certainly do not know anything that he is actually for. Stop acting like a big bellowing cow in the parliament. Tell us what you believe in and stop all this prating about democracy. (Time expired)

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