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

The reason it is relevant, Mr Speaker, is that the Prime Minister has spent the last week obfuscating and stonewalling in this House, because we know she will do anything to avoid having to go to the people from losing the member for Dobell. If she had the integrity that she claims, she would come into the House and put this issue behind her, clear the air and restore integrity into a government that is struggling.

The controversy surrounding the member for Dobell is paralysing the government. The government is utterly distracted by it. For weeks allegations, claims and supposed misrepresentations have dribbled out through the press and have now become an avalanche of stories every day for the last week. The issue has paralysed the government, a government that was already struggling and already showing it was incapable of occupying the government benches. Whether it was the live cattle export issue or the protection of our borders, the Malaysian solution, the announcement of the carbon tax or the breaking of the promise on the carbon tax that she made before the election, restoring confidence in the economy or protecting Australian families from rising cost-of-living pressures, these are the issues the Australian public cares about and these are the issues the government cannot and will not address while it is paralysed and distracted by the controversy surrounding the member for Dobell.

We move this motion to suspend standing orders to give the Prime Minister the opportunity to give a 10-minute speech, because we in the opposition want to give the Prime Minister the opportunity to clear the air, to put this matter behind her government—to move on so that ministers and backbenchers, the opposition and the government can all focus on what matters to the Australian people, which is their jobs and their livelihoods in a collapsing international economy. With the crisis of confidence among the community in this government and in the economy and with daily stories about job losses—whether it is at BlueScope or OneSteel or Westpac or Qantas—these are the issues we want to get on to, but until we get answers from the Prime Minister and the member for Dobell about the controversy surrounding him the government is paralysed and distracted, and that is why the Prime Minister must come into the House and give a full explanation of her involvement. (Time expired)

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