Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

to Europe where he told them that the Australian economy led by this Prime Minister and this Treasurer was the envy of the industrialised world. That is what he had to say overseas, and it stands in stark contrast to his behaviour in this House.

The fact is that this Leader of the Opposition is hoping to survive and get out of this place because he is looking forward to Christmas. He is hoping that Santa brings him a policy because what happened late yesterday in his own caucus room is that, one by one, they stood up and spoke about the National Party tail wagging the Liberal Party dog. They spoke about the pathetic failure of modern liberalism under this leader. Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, had this to say:

In other words, on far too many questions we have found our role to be simply that of the man who says 'No.'

A visionary was Robert Menzies: 67 years ago he picked this bloke, and this is what he also said about this bloke:

There is no room in Australia for a party of reaction. There is no useful place for a policy of negation.

That is what Robert Menzies said about this person who has led the coalition of yesterday into the 'noalition' of today—the 'noalition' who have just one policy to every issue: no, no, no, no, no. We heard it 32 times last night, and so desperate were they that we had the unprecedented action from the opposition of moving divisions and having counts on third readings of legislation. That is how strong they were in their opposition to big miners being taxed. That is how strong they were in making sure that they go to the next election. They are going to say to the people who have had the income tax-free threshold lifted from $6,000 to $18,000 that they are going to bring it back in. They are going to put a million people back into the income tax system, the lowest paid Australians in this country. Why? So that BHP, Rio Tinto and the big miners who say they can pay more will get a tax cut. What a disgrace, and that is on top of the fact that they are going to increase company tax for Australia's 2.7 million small businesses. That is the policy that they have.

Last night we saw the farce of them having a bit of a focus group—and maybe it came through: maybe they are being a little bit too negative. 'Maybe we need to have a bit of a nuance.' So we saw the little nuance with regard to superannuation. They did not trust the shadow finance minister, so he was out of the loop. But they made an announcement about superannuation about how they were going to support it, and guess what? Last night—

Mr Christensen interjecting—

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