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

The reason why standing orders should not be suspended, Madam Deputy Speaker, is because they are the issues of substance.

That is why I went into politics. I went into politics to make a difference—to make a difference to the people who I grew up with, to the vulnerable people in the community, through things such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the education refund and through measures such as the industrial relations reforms we have brought in to get rid of Work Choices and, most fundamentally, to make sure that we have a strong economy.

And there is no stronger economy anywhere in the world. For the first time in 40 years, under this Prime Minister and this Treasurer we have unemployment, official interest rates and inflation all under five per cent—for the first time in 40 years. No wonder they do not want to debate us on substance. If you want to have a debate about those issues, bring it on! But if you just want this self-indulgent, blood-lust for power that we see from this megalomaniac opposite, then we will say no to that, because what we are seeing day after day in this parliament is a trashing of the pillars of democracy, a trashing of the separation of powers, a trashing of the presumption of innocence, a trashing of the rule of law.

It is fundamentally important that we meet the challenge which is there in this hung parliament. A hung parliament is different. It does bring with it different characteristics. It brings forward a challenge for the maturity of our democracy. It is the case that, for the first time since the Second World War, the government does not have a majority on the floor of this parliament. That is an opportunity as well as a challenge. It is an opportunity to have a far more consultative parliament. It is an opportunity to be far more inclusive than the traditional system whereby a government has a majority and uses its numbers to crunch through. It is an opportunity to change that. But what we are seeing from those opposite is the longest dummy spit in Australian political history—a refusal to accept the result from the Australian people in 2010. We see every single day a refusal and a challenge to the legitimacy not of this government but of our democracy. That is what has made them angry. And that is why you have the extraordinary proposition that people should just be told to resign and people should just change the outcome. We even had, last week, the Manager of Opposition Business put notices on the motion—notices on the paper—

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