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

That was another of the opposition’s hysterical tactics. They do not like government speakers, so they seek to interrupt them day after day. It truly is pathetic.

In relation to the Howard government cabinet ministers—and one is sitting at the table now, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—in the government’s dying days there must have been some good times, mustn’t there, just sitting there taking public service advice, driving up in the big white car at 9 o’clock, having a cup of coffee and a little bit of a look at the newspapers, having public servants come in with a brief? Presumably they always accepted public service advice. Presumably the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said: ‘Oh, I do not even need to read that; I’ll just sign it. It’s public service advice; I’ve got to sign that.’ So you would do that until elevenses, presumably, and then a couple more briefs would come in and it would be: ‘Oh, it’s public service advice. I am absolutely going to sign that; I will not even read it.’ Then at about one o’clock you would be looking to have lunch with Alexander Downer. That would have been a day’s work in the Howard government when they were stale, out of touch with working families and making sure that working families were bearing the burden of Work Choices. That is what they were doing.

This is ridiculous behaviour by the opposition. We were elected to govern. We were elected to make decisions in the interests of working families and we are doing it—

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