Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. I am not surprised about the sensitivity of the Manager of Opposition Business, because the simple fact is that the whole strategy of the opposition today has been to talk about a matter which people in Australia must be scratching their heads about and wondering why on earth Labor thinks this is the most important thing we could be talking about today.

On this side of the House, we are talking about jobs for Australians; the 600 new jobs a day that we are creating. We are talking about growth; 2.7 per cent growth this year, versus 1.9 per cent in the last year of the Labor government. We are talking about child care; the Minister for Social Services has been down at the National Press Club today talking about how to make the lives of ordinary Australians easier every day because of the good decisions this government makes around child care, around jobs, around families, around foreign investment in Australia. We are protecting Australians through national security, stopping Australians from being subjected to terror attacks. That is what this government is getting on with every day. We are planning things for small business, so small business can continue to be the engine room of the economy; to create jobs, to create growth.

What is the Labor Party doing? The Labor Party are popping their heads right in the chum bucket. All they want to do is talk about the detritus of Australian politics. That is what they want to talk about. They want to have a big argument about a matter that the Australian public would be thinking about as, 'Surely, our elected politicians have more important things to do?'

So we will not be supporting the suspension of standing orders, because we have a whole raft of business today on the daily program to deal with. We are right in the middle of a debate about the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014—an important bill to change Australia for the future and to change Australia for the better. I know that my colleagues are lining up to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No 3). They are, in fact, lining up to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) because they know they can talk in general about their electorates, about projects in their electorates, about the infrastructure of the 21st century and about dams that we plan to build in northern Australia to fix the mess that Labor left us with. They are going to talk about the roads of the 21st century, like the North-South Corridor, and how we are generating growth and generating income for the Australian public, creating jobs so that they can feed their families.

That is not what Labor is interested in. Labor is not interested in any positive development for Australia. All they want to do is cheer bad news. But I do not hear them cheering when the ANZ job ads are up for the eighth month in a row. The eighth month in a row! ANZ job ads are up, retail trade has been up every month for the last seven months and there were more new company registrations last year than at any time on record. More company registrations! There was an increase in the loans for new housing starts in Australia last year. Confidence is returning to the Australian economy and to the Australian people. And Labor wants to snuff that out because Labor thinks that if they can flatten the mood of the Australian public, then the Australian public will look elsewhere than to this government.

But the Australian public know that this government is getting on with the job to make their lives easier, because that is why we are elected. We are not elected to be involved in beltway discussions about what happened in Senate estimates yesterday. That is what the Labor Party wants to do. We are elected to put the Australian public first on every single day of our jobs, and that is what we have been doing for 18 months. We have been a good government and, my, we have had a lot to clean up from the mess left behind by the Labor Party.

We also need to make the important point that it is the height of hypocrisy for the Leader of the Opposition to come into this House and lecture us about trust and integrity. To lecture us! This is the man who took out two prime ministers! It was not enough for 'Backstabber Bill' to get rid of one prime minister; it was not enough to get his way to the top and to be sitting in that chair but to get rid of two—so he did! Francis Urquhart would be proud of him!

So, first he gets rid of Kevin Rudd—

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