Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I say to the House that standing orders should be suspended in order to allow the Prime Minister the opportunity to come back into the chamber and make a full explanation to the House about her involvement and that of her officers in the gift of at least $90,000 to the member for Dobell from the New South Wales ALP to settle his defamation action with Fairfax Media Ltd and about any discussions she has had with the member for Dobell about his remaining in the House or as Chair of the House Standing Committee on Economics.

Since last Tuesday we have asked eight questions in this place of the Prime Minister or other ministers about what they knew and when and about their confidence in the member for Dobell. All we have had in response from the Prime Minister is stonewalling and obfuscation. Any other prime minister worth their salt–whether it is the current member for Griffith or the former Prime Minister John Howard or Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating or Bob Hawke—would have understood the necessity to take action today, or in fact weeks ago, to restore integrity to this government. If the Prime Minister was worth her salt, she would come into the House, she would make an explanation about everything she knows and she would clear the air. She would do so to restore integrity in this government in the eyes of the public.

But we know what she has said about how much she loves power. She told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2005: 'I'd cheerfully kill several hundred people to get the opportunity to be a minister in the short term.' We know that she was prepared to assassinate—politically assassinate—the member for Griffith when he was the Prime Minister. Goodness knows what she will do to cling to power.

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