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

I seek leave to move a motion of censure against the government.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Warringah moving immediately:

That this House censures the Prime Minister for her failure to achieve anything of substance in 12 months of government after supplanting her predecessor on the basis that the government had lost its way when it is clear on any assessment that things have just gone from bad to worse.

Mr Speaker, I am seeking to move a motion of censure of this Prime Minister, and she is fleeing the chamber. Let me repeat my motion:

That this House censures the Prime Minister for her failure to achieve anything of substance in 12 months of government after supplanting her predecessor on the basis that the government had lost its way when it is clear on any assessment that things have just gone from bad to worse.

There is no more important step that an opposition could take than to move to censure this Prime Minister. This Prime Minister, rather than listen, has fled this chamber—no doubt for another Tim Tam and cup of tea in the Whip's office. It is one thing to gag the Australian people and it is one thing to muzzle her ministers, but she should not run away from this parliament.

Twelve months on, there is the ghost of a real Prime Minister hovering over this parliament—a real Prime Minister who was actually elected by a majority of the people and who was cut down by a politician who turned out to be very good at executing her party leader but hopeless at actually running the country. That is why this House should move a censure of this Prime Minister and that is why it is necessary to move to suspend standing orders to give us this opportunity.

What has been achieved in 12 months? What has the execution of the member for Griffith achieved? What has the political assassination of an elected Prime Minister achieved? We heard the Prime Minister today struggle and struggle and struggle to name any single measure of substance that had been achieved by this government. It is no wonder that members opposite look so downcast, so deflated, so lost, so flat and so defeated today, because they know that they conspired in the political assassination of an elected Prime Minister—for what? For a government that had lost its way 12 months ago and has just been going from bad to worse ever since and a country that is going from bad to worse because we have a Prime Minister who is both incompetent and utterly untrustworthy.

I do not say for a second that the former Prime Minister was a great Prime Minister, but at least we knew what the former Prime Minister stood for. Yes, he was dictatorial; yes, he was arrogant; yes, he was incompetent—but I tell you what: he had a few convictions and he had a few things that he believed in. He did believe in the 'moral challenge' of climate change. He did believe in the 'education revolution'. He did want to improve educational standards in our country. He did want to improve hospitals in our country. Sure, he did not do it very well. Yes, he blew the budget surplus that had been carefully accumulated over 12 years by his predecessor; yes, he rolled back important economic reforms—but at least he stood for something. All this Prime Minister stands for is herself and her ambition, and that is why she has been such an incompetent, untrustworthy and unworthy Prime Minister over this last 12 months.

When the Prime Minister said 12 months ago that the government had lost its way she nominated three things that she was going to fix. She was not just going to fix these things; she was going to get the whole country back on track. 'I have taken control', she said. Such brazen arrogance—'I have taken control, for precisely that purpose: to get the country back on track.' What has happened to this country and to this Prime Minister's promises in the last 12 months? She was going to sort out border protection, wasn't she? We know what has happened there. First of all, there was the East Timor solution that came to nothing. Then there was the Manus Island solution. I tell you: it helps if you actually speak to foreign governments before you announce things. It helps if you actually talk to the East Timorese government before you announce a processing centre there. It would help to actually get an agreement from the PNG government before announcing a processing centre on Manus Island. And it would help if there actually was a concluded agreement with Malaysia before you announced a people swap with this country.

Over all of this hangs the shadow of the former Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs—the foreign minister who this Prime Minister refuses to involve in any of the serious difficulties now facing this country. This Prime Minister took away her predecessor's' job and now she will not let the foreign minister do his job and help her out of the jams that she has created for herself. Why won't she let the foreign minister sort out the Manus Island detention centre? Why won't she let the foreign minister do something about East Timor? Most of all, why won't she let the foreign minister fix up the unfolding disaster now threatening the whole of Northern Australia with the demise of the live cattle trade? We know what she was doing in there with the foreign minister a few days ago. It was not a polite chitchat over Tim Tams and tea. She was ordering the foreign minister to stay out of the live trade issue. She was banning the foreign minister from travelling to Indonesia to sort out this problem, because she could not bring herself to admit that the man she executed is actually a better politician than she is.

That is why it is necessary to move this suspension. That is why it is necessary that this Prime Minister be censured—because she has been a thoroughly incompetent and untrustworthy Prime Minister. The government had indeed lost its way 12 months ago, but it has got worse—every single day, every single week, every single month—since then, because this Prime Minister is just not up to the job.

Let us come to the Prime Minister's ultimate failure: her total failure to be honest with the Australian people about the carbon tax. We all know she executed her predecessor in part because he had mishandled climate change policy.

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