Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

The government spent some weeks preparing its spending package and then it came to this House, after announcing the package, and gave the opposition 45 minutes notice. When the government on the following day introduced six bills—and at that time it was not sure whether there were five or six bills—even as the first bill was introduced the government said to the opposition, ‘This parliament, this chamber, will sit continuously until the six bills are passed because there is an urgency about this spending package.’ How embarrassing this is for the government, after having guillotined the bills through this place at five o’clock in the morning while the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were still asleep. This package was so important to the nation that it had to go through an all night sitting. We then discovered when it went to the Senate that there was filibustering by government senators because they could not get the numbers in the Senate to support their own legislation. The Senate had an inquiry—the inquiry that the government said could not be done because there was an urgency to the legislation. That Senate inquiry found numerous technical flaws in the legislation. It also identified that the legislation in fact failed to be the stimulus package that the government had promised.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister was more focused on gaining public support than he was on gaining the support of this, the people’s parliament. He gave up on the people’s parliament. He chose to believe that the House of Representatives and the Senate would simply rubber stamp six bills. How wrong the government was. How embarrassing for the Prime Minister that he called all the premiers and chief ministers to Canberra and had a big consultation with them, and then the bills failed. How embarrassing for the Prime Minister that he called hundreds of business leaders to Canberra and the bills failed. Today the government, with egg all over its face, has found that it is a whole new world out there when you have to make hard decisions.

The Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the National Party have offered the government on numerous occasions the opportunity to sit down with the opposition in the same way that President Obama chose to sit down with members of congress and members of the US senate on a significant stimulus package in the United States. President Obama is a real leader with an enormous mandate from the American people, and he had the courage to do that—but not our Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister will not do that. Our Prime Minister will sit down with everyone else, anticipating that ‘his’ parliament will rubber stamp the bills. Lo and behold, when he does not get the rubber stamp from the parliament he simply comes back on his bulldozer and demands that the bills go through in another late night sitting. This is panic from the government. This is not reassuring for the Australian people. This does not build confidence in Australia. It is panic on panic. Even at the time question time was scheduled for today, the government did not know that it did not have the numbers in the Senate. I sat in the Senate for an hour and a half and it was perfectly clear they were not going to get the numbers because the government panicked on this spending package. The parliament has spoken for the Australian people in rejecting bad legislation.

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