Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Today we are seeing an opposition in disarray—hysterical and in disarray. Walking into the parliament and moving a censure motion on the Prime Minister is supposed to be an important thing to do. In terms of the weaponry given to an opposition, censure motions, particularly those on the Prime Minister, are the biggest weapon they have. And here we have an opposition that has walked into the parliament using the biggest weapon at their disposal, and they do not have enough speakers ready to talk to it. They missed the jump. We have been treated to a speech by the member for Cowper, who was clearly unprepared, and none of the senior leadership team, with the exception of the shadow Treasurer, is even in the parliament. These people are asking the Australian people to treat them seriously when they cannot even organise themselves to get an opposition tactic ready on a Thursday morning. This is a laughable display from an opposition that is in disarray.

And why are they in disarray? It is because they have not come to terms with the fact that they lost the last election. Even more than that, they are trying to perpetuate a collective fraud and get the Australian people to believe it. The collective fraud that they are trying to get the Australian people to believe is that somehow they fell out of the sky on 25 November and fell into the seats on the opposition front bench. They want the Australian people to believe that none of them ever had a moment in politics before 25 November—that somehow they were all born new on 25 November and turned up on the opposition front bench.

But of course that is not true, and because it is not true the Australian people can judge them by their record. It is a record that they are desperately trying to twist and turn and get away from, but the Australian people can judge them by their record. All of this emotional, hysterical, feigned concern about working families that they have engaged in since they lost the election stands in stark contrast to their complete indifference to the plight of working families before the election. These are not political novices; these are people who sat around a cabinet table and made decisions to the detriment of working families. There was no feigned concern about the plight of working families then. There was no feigned concern when they were sitting around the cabinet table.

Let’s go directly to the performance of the Leader of the Opposition in this debate. He has been in here in question time highly emotional about people queued in cars at petrol stations with kids in the back and dogs in the back—highly emotional. And let’s reflect: this is the same man who sat around a cabinet table for six years, and during those six years what did he do on petrol? Absolutely nothing. Six years around a cabinet table—apparently highly emotional about the state of working families and petrol prices—and he did absolutely nothing.

Of course, we are going to see more hysteria and more cover-ups by the opposition of their past. They do not want people remembering their past. All those years around the cabinet table: six years for the Leader of the Opposition, two years for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and around the same time for the shadow Treasurer. They are all interested in petrol prices now, but when they were sitting in the chairs that would have enabled them to do something about it, what did they do? Absolutely nothing.

And at the same time that they were sitting in those chairs with all this feigned concern about working families, what did they do? They brought Work Choices to working Australians. All this feigned concern about working families and what did they do around that cabinet table when the evidence came in that working families were getting ripped off by Work Choices? What did they do—squeal with delight, laugh, backslap each other, do a couple of high fives and say: ‘Exactly what we wanted. We wanted working families to have their penalty rates ripped off. Good on us’? Is that what was happening around the Howard cabinet table? The people who now feign concern for working families delivered that to working people.

So let’s get away from all of this cant, this hypocrisy, this fraud, these feigned emotions and this fake concern. This opposition is so phoney. I have seen knock-off Chinese Rolexes that are more genuine than the members of the opposition. At least you can say that a knock-off Chinese Rolex does the job, which is more than you can say about this lot.

Amongst the things we have seen them emote about and be concerned about was Bonnie Babes. Do we remember that? The Leader of the Opposition was so paralysed with emotion he could hardly move, on Bonnie Babes. He is the same man who sat around a cabinet table for six years and, when it came to deciding what to do with $121 million, did he say, ‘Let’s put that into Bonnie Babes,’ or did he say, ‘Let’s put that into Work Choices propaganda’? We know what he said. He made a choice when sitting around that cabinet table. Fund Bonnie Babes or fund Work Choices propaganda? He chose Work Choices propaganda. That is what these people did when they sat around cabinet tables. That is what they will be judged by.

And of course we have had an insight through this motion into the dying days of the Howard government and how they must have conducted themselves. Gee, it must have been easy to be a Howard government minister in those dying days, because apparently, according to those who sit opposite, the responsibility of a minister is to come in—

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