Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I accord the current Prime Minister the dignity of his current office. The problem with this government is not their current leader; it is the values of their MPs and ministers—the values that have led every one of them to support the extreme, ideological agenda of this government, the values that led the Minister for Communications to tell Alan Jones, 'I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element of the budget. Every single one,' and the values that led the Minister for Foreign Affairs to declare, 'The whole cabinet has to take responsibility for the budget.' The Prime Minister might claim that 'good government starts today' but the unfair policies of his bad government remain unchanged.

Even the one policy that the PM tried to change to save his bacon, his alleged backflip on the broken promise not to build Australia's next round of submarines in Adelaide, is less than meets the eye. Instead of the 'full and open tender' for the construction of these submarines promised to Senator Edwards and other South Australian MPs before the vote on his leadership, we are now told that the PM intends to run a 'competitive evaluation process'—a mystery process unknown to anyone in the Australian defence community. Perhaps the member for Bass can inform us in his upcoming contribution.

In this respect, at least, the Prime Minister has helped to reconnect South Australian MPs, including the Member for Hindmarsh, with the Australian public. South Australian Liberal MPs now know exactly how the rest of the country feels after being lied to by the Prime Minister before he asked them for their vote. I am sure that South Australian Liberal MPs now wish they could hold their very own 'competitive evaluation process' of the Prime Minister's job. This government has not changed, and it will not change until the next federal election.

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