Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Curtin from moving the following motion forthwith:

That the Prime Minister explain to the House and to the Australian people why she should continue to hold the office of Prime Minister, an office she has debased in the manner in which she came to it, in her handling of the Craig Thomson affair, in the contradictions that riddle her explanation of the role her staff played in the Australia Day riot and in her deception of the Australian people before the 2010 election over the introduction of the carbon tax, gambling reform, means testing the private health insurance rebate and operating an open and transparent government.

The office of Prime Minister comes with great responsibility, and the person who holds that office must have integrity, honesty, competence and good judgment. Standing orders must be suspended because this Prime Minister has so debased the highest office in the land, and her government is in such turmoil as a result, this motion must be debated. The Prime Minister lacks the fundamental qualities that a Prime Minister, the pinnacle of government, demands, and without integrity, without honesty, without competence and without good judgment in the Prime Minister this government cannot function. Standing orders must be suspended to debate this motion.

Cabinet ministers are spending their evenings with Labor backbenchers counting numbers, tallying up the columns of names and not running the country. One of the great burdens that falls upon the shoulders of any Prime Minister is to be the custodian of our parliamentary system and to ensure that the bonds of trust between the parliament and the voting public are not broken. I can assure the member for Griffith that he has the vote of the Chief Government Whip. The Prime Minister has monumentally failed in that task, and that is why standing orders must be suspended.

The Prime Minister betrayed the trust of the former Prime Minister when she was his deputy. The Prime Minister betrayed the trust of the member for Denison. But, most grievously, the Prime Minister has betrayed the trust of the Australian people. The conduct of this Prime Minister makes it clear that she has little regard for the truth and thus that she holds the Australian public in contempt. That is why standing orders must be suspended.

There have been new revelations overnight about this Prime Minister's conduct which require standing orders to be suspended so we can debate my substantive motion. The Prime Minister cannot on the one hand express noble sentiments, such as those in her fine Closing the Gap address this morning, while presiding over a culture within her office so squalid that they saw fit to incite the Aboriginal tent embassy protesters on Australia Day, to attempt to use Aboriginal people in a tawdry, deceitful fashion.

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