Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Well, well, here we are again. It is like groundhog day. Here we have Bill Murray and we are recreating the scene—he looks a bit like Bill Murray, does not he? He does, a little bit like Bill Murray—charming, but a little dishevelled and a little uncertain where this is all going. I feel like this is groundhog day all over again. Here we are back in the chamber, another bill under this minister, bill under Bill. Along comes the situation where it has been put to the parliament, the government reluctantly sends it to a committee, the committee under Labor's control unanimously endorse the bill then Bill comes back in to change the bill.

Of course, last night this played out in the Treasury and we were being told that this legislation has to go through the House of Representatives immediately. The government did not even have the amendments. Beavering away under torchlight last night were 100 Treasury officials, desperately trying to redraft legislation because the minister said, 'We're going to put it into the parliament tonight'. The amendments were responding to what we were suggesting were the problems, the fundamental flaws in the bill.

However, pride is an emotion familiar to this minister. He is not prepared to admit that so many of these amendments come about because we raise the issues. As I understand it, there was a spelling mistake in the government's legislation. We did not do that. We try to pick up not just the policy errors but also the spelling errors in government legislation. What is interesting from my perspective is that the minister comes into the House and pretends that this is business as usual for the House of Representatives. It is business as usual to bring legislation into the House, to declare, like a state of emergency, urgency to introduce 17 amendments which stakeholders had not seen until we raised them with them today. All through the night, in a fit of urgency, the Treasury was working away at them. This is the second time this week. Talk about a comedy caper over there.

If the government cannot run a simple process of putting in place legislation and consulting with the community, it is no wonder they cannot run a budget. It is no wonder they cannot run the economy, no wonder they cannot run general policy. The government have such abject disregard for this chamber not only do they rush in legislation; the Prime Minister heroically equally declares that a nine-page piece of legislation on education is going to revolutionise Australia, even though that piece of legislation introduced by the Prime Minister has no funding, no objectives and no agency to deliver anything—it is legislated press release. That is the contempt that the government feel for this parliament in order to try to pretend that the wheels are turning fast in the government.

I think the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation—and I might get in trouble for this—is inherently a pretty decent guy—

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