Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I know you would have been listening to the debate previously, and you would have heard members’ contributions to this debate that have ranged very far and wide, particularly on the government side. But I do thank the member opposite for his guidance.

I think the reason why having a Prime Minister who has no political convictions, who apparently just likes to try on different political personas, is so problematic is that we also have a Prime Minister who insists on centralising all power within his own office. This is deeply problematic when you have no core beliefs of your own to guide you. This is why we get this split characteristic from the government. This is why you get confusion from the government about the direction in which it wants to head. This is a government that is now so disorganised that we have to make these decisions in the parliament at the very last minute. Of course all of us in this place know why. We all know that nothing moves within this new government without the imprimatur of the Prime Minister or his office. We all know that decisions are not taken without him actually taking them. This is a Prime Minister who insists always on having the final say about the whole raft of policies that are associated with being an effective Commonwealth government.

Leaving aside that that style is going to be extremely problematic in dealing with something as complex as the government of Australia, I want to move to why we are discussing this bill today. We have a government that is absolutely desperate to change the story. It is doing what it does best, which is, of course, prioritising spin, eschewing any substance. It is doing what it does best. It is trying to change what is a very bad story for this government, so it is rolling out its specialty—spin. For six months this new government has been able to float along—there is a reasonably compliant media. I think Australians, when they change government, are always willing to give the new government the benefit of the doubt. But this week, since the budget, we have found that this government actually has to govern. It has to do things beyond just symbolic measures; it has to make decisions. It has to try to improve the lives of the Australian people. There are no guiding principles for the government. It has a Prime Minister, a leader, who is a political charlatan. It has a Prime Minister with absolutely no convictions. It has a Prime Minister who just likes to try on different personas—be it hairy-chested economic reformer or caring Prime Minister worried about how far economic reform has gone. This is why it is very difficult to get an idea about the nature of this government, and we see that with the policy we are debating before the House today.

As I said, we are debating it because the government is very keen to change the story today. It is very keen to change the story about the fact that it has a Fuelwatch scheme that is aimed at implementing one of its election commitments, which is to bring down petrol prices in Australia. We have had the scheme—

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