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

Standing orders must be suspended because there is no more important matter that should be before the chamber today than the integrity of the Prime Minister. The caucus knows she has lost her integrity. The media know it. The public knows it. Finally, the Labor Party should put the Prime Minister and this government out of their misery.

Standing orders should not just be suspended because this Prime Minister has lost her integrity when it comes to introducing the biggest carbon tax in the world; they should be suspended because she showed the same lack of integrity to the member for Griffith, the former Attorney-General, former minister Kim Carr, the former Speaker—the current Speaker still maintains the position—and the member for Dobell. In fact, many of her staff have fallen on the funeral pyre of her pride and vanity. Why should any member of the caucus support a Prime Minister who expects them to go to the funeral pyre at the next election simply to protect the pride and vanity of an unworthy prime minister?

Standing orders should be suspended because the Prime Minister reminds me of a rabbit at a greyhound race meet. She is out the front, she is being pursued by the greyhounds behind her—the member for Griffith, the minister for local government, the Minister for Defence and, of course, the littlest minister of all, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Even if the Prime Minister had succeeded in any of the matters that she promised two years ago, standing orders should be suspended and this Prime Minister should be censured even for just one matter alone, and that was her most solemn promise, her absolute pledge, that there would be 'no carbon tax under a government I lead', which she followed up in order to ensure the Australian public could trust her. And could they trust her? I think all the evidence is to the contrary. You only have to look at the faces of the frontbench and the backbench this week in question time, to watch those frowns on the backbench, except for 'Rumpole' over there, who has got no feelings and does not know what is going on in his electorate because he does not live there—he lives in Toorak instead.

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