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

Another day, another tax shambles from the Abbott-Turnbull government. Yesterday, members were treated to one of the most spectacular ventriloquist acts you will ever see. The member for Warringah projected his voice, threw his voice, across the chamber 50 feet into the mouth of the Prime Minister at the despatch box. I even saw the member for Warringah drink a glass of water at one point, but still Tony Abbott's words and his baseless political scares continued to flow from Malcolm Turnbull's mouth.

The Abbott-Turnbull message was: forget what the independent experts say; under Labor property prices will go down. Yet this morning, the Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O'Dwyer—presumably taking her lead from the gaffe-prone Treasurer—told Australians on breakfast television viewers that property prices would go up under Labor. As my colleague the member for Rankin noted this morning, while neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Tony Abbott is capable of running a government, at least Tony Abbott could run a scare campaign. It is true: you did not see shadow ministers out their warning about the prices of lamb roasts falling under a Labor government when Tony Abbott was leader. No! Under Tony Abbott the Liberals picked one baseless scare campaign and they stuck with it no matter how implausible it was.

But the pickle the Prime Minister has gotten himself into is that, without a tax policy of his own, no-one—not even his cabinet ministers—knows what the government's economic message is. For the sanity of his ministers, the PM should pick one scare campaign and stick with it. Even better, he should announce a tax policy so that the ministry have something to talk about other than the policies of the Labor Party. (Time expired)

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