Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking to the appropriation bills, I intend to take advantage of the fact that one can speak on a wide range of subjects and, of course, one of those subjects is the carbon tax, which is conspicuously absent from the appropriation bills and, indeed, from the budget generally. One would have expected it to have been dealt with at least in the budget speech of the Treasurer. But as we saw today from his performance in this House, where he was shown to be someone who tells untruths and perpetually tells untruths, I guess I am not at all surprised that he omitted to leave any reference to the carbon tax out of his budget speech.

But I think it is important to know that the problem with this government is that it is not legitimate. It is a totally illegitimate government. It was not elected and the problem for the Prime Minister is that she was not a legitimately elected Prime Minister either. She came to office by being part of a Shakespearean plot where 'E tu, Brute' was active. A dagger was put in the back of Kevin Rudd in order that he could be disposed of and the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, put in his place. The fact of the matter is that she stitched up a nasty deal with trade union heavies in order to get this position. There were members of the Labor caucus who did not even know that the challenge was on. So she stitched up a deal and became the Prime Minister.

She then called an election and went to that election seeking a mandate to legitimise her position as Prime Minister and Labor as a legitimate government. She failed to secure a majority. In fact, the coalition scored a majority of primary votes and the net outcome is that the people believe that there was no outcome from this election at all. She was able to get a commission from the Governor-General to form a government because the Greens entered into a coalition alliance with the Labor Party and because the Independents in this House agreed that they would not support a no-confidence motion and therefore allowed her to gain a commission and form a government.

Just as once an election is called the entire economy seizes up—people do not make decisions, people do not spend; they are nervous about the outcome— that is exactly what we are seeing in the community as a whole right now. There is absolutely no confidence among the people in the electorate that they can in any way trust this government at all. In fact, they see it as simply a continuation of the campaigning that led up to the election day when no result came forth. Over the weekend I was standing for many hours collecting for charities and a number of people simply came up and asked when were we going to get an election, when were we going to get rid of this Prime Minister—some of them were more deprecating in their terminology than I am in what I am using here—and when could they get rid of this government, as they feel there is no possible progress that can be made in this country until such time as there is an election and the government is removed. I have no doubt that if there were an election we would go in with a solid position to put to the Australian people which would seek a legitimacy and mandate for this side of the House. When we look at the words of the Prime Minister six days before the election we note she said 'there will be no carbon tax under any government that I lead'.

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