Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What we have seen this government do is fail at leadership not once, but twice. We had Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, as the Prime Minister. This lot over here do not want to remember that; they want to erase that from their collective memories. I do not know whether we have any of the plotters here today—maybe the Assistant Treasurer. I do not know if he was at that famous meeting at Queanbeyan.

We all know why Tony Abbott failed as a leader: he was relentlessly negative; there were cuts of $60 billion; there was a horror budget; there were attacks on pensioners and workers; they kissed goodbye to the automotive industry and they threatened to send our submarine manufacturing to foreign countries. He dug himself into such a hole, such a failure of leadership, that we then had the contortionists opposite—who had promised us 'adult government'—elect Malcolm Turnbull to the prime ministership. The country breathed a sigh of relief, as a new style of leadership was promised: good government, sound policies, advocacy not slogans and respecting the intelligence of the Australian people. People expected progressive policies from a united government. They expected evidence based government. They expected cabinet style government. They expected policies on climate change that made sense. They expected advances in equality. They expected some progress.

But what did they get from Mr Turnbull? They got divided government. They got two prime ministers, two treasurers, three defence ministers and 14 ministerial changes—including three resignations. It is extraordinary. It is an absolutely extraordinary turnover of people. Think about that. Think about that in the context of people learning their portfolios and of advisors trying to get across things. Think about that in terms of the stakeholders—they would not know who they are dealing with. We have had this extraordinary turmoil and failure of leadership at the heart of this government.

Fundamentally, when we got the new Prime Minister, we were all hanging out for this new progress. What did we get? First of all, on taxation policy, we had the Treasurer running around the country softening people up for a rise in the GST, trying to do a deal with the state governments and trying to put them in a corner where they would back a rise in the GST—and, sadly, some of them did, so desperate were they to fund their schools and hospitals.

The Prime Minister, like the grand old Duke of York, marched all of the troops opposite up the hill. Up they went, all of them, including the member for Corangamite and the member for Mayo. The member for Mayo was sort of out there in front, as he is a keen believer in the GST. Up the hill they went, and it all got too hard and an arrow flew past the Prime Minister and they came back down again. He completely cut the ground out from underneath his Treasurer on taxation policy; so much so that, if you read Paul Kelly—this is a headline in The Australian: 'Caught without a tax policy, Turnbull performs a pivot'. That is what we are getting out of this government.

It is like the mythical animal in Dr Dolittle, pushmi-pullyu, trying to go one way and then trying to go the other. We saw the same thing this week on the capital gains tax. We saw the same thing on, of all things, the Safe Schools policy. This is a headline yesterday—and in the Barossa Herald, mind you; hardly an organ of socialism: 'Support essential in a changing landscape'. This was the first line of that story:

Who knew that creating a safe school community could cause so much controversy?

This is what conservative country newspapers are saying about you lot.

Why? We know why—because Cory Bernardi and others got up in the Liberal Party party room and pushed the Prime Minister into a policy change. That is what has happened. We have seen the same thing on housing. So desperate are those opposite to run a fear campaign and a scare campaign—they are now pining for the member for Warringah—that they force the Prime Minister into running this disingenuous bunch of lies about Labor's policy.

It was totally exposed by the member for Higgins, who was arguing that house prices are going to go up while the Prime Minister was arguing that they are going to go down. You cannot have both sides of an argument. It is the classic sign of a government that is divided and confused and that does not know what it is doing—a government that is failing to provide leadership to the Australian people. I can tell you what will make house prices go down: bad government, divided government, government that does not know what it is doing, a government that is going to wreck the economy.

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