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

It is important that leave of absence be granted to members for the next seven weeks in order to give the government that is crumbling before our very eyes the opportunity, should the Prime Minister be replaced or even if the Prime Minister is not replaced, to start regrouping and focusing on what matters to Australians today: cost-of-living pressures, job security, the protection of our borders, economic management. What we have seen in the last four days, what we have seen for the last 2½ years, is not the kind of government that this country deserves. We are a great people let down by a very bad government, and what we are seeing today is the final Brutus act of Simon Crean, the former minister for regional Australia, driving his knife into the back of the Prime Minister and supporting Kevin Rudd—the final act in what has been a tragicomic play. Unfortunately, the losers from this play have been the Australian people.

The opposition stands ready to form a government whenever an election is called. The Leader of the Opposition's team has worked for the last 2½ years to prepare this side of the House for government. At least one side of the House has been focusing on the kind of important policy work that will be necessary to get the country moving again should the government change whenever an election is held. On the other side of the House we have seen a revolving door of leaders. We have had more prime ministers in the last 2½ or three years than in the first 10 years of Federation, when our country first began.

It is not good enough—it is not good enough for the Australian parliament, for the 13th largest economy in the world—to be led by a government which is internally focused, inwardly focused. In order for leave of absence to mean anything, whoever emerges from the leadership battle this afternoon at half past four must refocus the government on what matters to the Australian people. How will the member for Griffith overcome the statement he made to the Labor Party caucus after he was defeated in February last year, when he said that he pledged his undying loyalty to Julia Gillard as leader of the Labor Party? He not only said that he would never challenge the Prime Minister of Australia in this term; he also said that if anybody else did, they would have to go through him first—that he would be the first person standing in line to defend the Prime Minister.

Today, the member for Hotham has called on the member for Griffith to stand for the leadership—but the member for Griffith is crippled from the beginning. If he challenges the Prime Minister this afternoon, he is breaking his first promise to the Labor caucus and to the Australian people—that not only would he not challenge Julia Gillard as Prime Minister but also he would be standing first in line to defend the Prime Minister. That is why leave of absence should be granted to members of the Australian parliament assembled today—so that the government can get its act together; so that finally it can start putting job security first, it can start putting cost of living first, as well as protecting our borders and good economic management. If it becomes apparent that those opposite cannot do that, they should call the election the Australian people so desperately desire so they can put adults in charge of the executive wing rather than those squabbling children; those knife-fighting, cage-fighting people who pass for the modern day Labor Party.

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