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

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah from moving the following motion forthwith:That the Prime Minister be called and address the House, for a period not exceeding 10 minutes to be followed by the Leader of the Opposition for the same time, to allow the Prime Minister to defend himself against the serious charge that he has broken yet another promise to the Australian people in relation to government advertising, and in particular:

(1)

for declaring government advertising a “cancer on democracy” in 2007 but now, with an election looming, amassing a $126 million advertising war-chest funded by the taxpayer;

(2)

for shutting down the previous ad approval process overseen by the Auditor-General, replacing it with a committee and then exempting himself from his own committee’s rules on “national emergency” grounds; and

(3)

for trying to re-write the sequence of events to claim that the government’s advertising blitz is only necessary to counter mining industry ads when in fact, we know from the Treasurer’s secret letter that the government planned their $38 million PR war months before the great big new tax on mining was even announced.

This Prime Minister is a fraud and he has been found out.

See this speech in context