Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It is very difficult to work out whether the member for Reid is arguing our case or theirs. He says they have real problems. Yes, they do; they really do. He says they have a problem with the AAA credit rating. Yes, they do. He says they have a problem with debt and deficit. Yes, they do, because they have added to both. Now he is claiming that on the Prime Minister's self-described greatest achievement, that ironclad commitment to change superannuation, somehow today's changes are not a humiliating backdown.

We all know what is going on. The Prime Minister has been rolled. The Treasurer has been rolled. The Minister for Revenue and Financial Services has been rolled. They have all been rolled by the backbench up here, complaining about the fact that high-income earners might actually have to pay a bit of extra super. The great irony of this one as well is that the minister for revenue's great achievement today was the low-income superannuation contribution. Seriously! What a great idea! I wish I had thought of that! I wish we had introduced that when we were in government! These people tried to get rid of it, and the fact that they could not get rid of it they are now claiming as a great victory: 'We couldn't get rid of it. What a great victory that is!'

Today we have another day, another capitulation, another stuff-up, another surrender—another policy that the Prime Minister said he was absolutely ironclad committed to, trashed by the conservative right wing of his own party. Yesterday the member for Chifley brought the Prime Minister a spine. I hope he kept the receipt. Once again we see this backbench calling the shots and this government like a chessboard, with the pawns up front and the king sitting up the back, unable to move.

Last week we heard a journalist with quite a sense of humour ask the Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth, to nominate his greatest achievement as Prime Minister. Unlike Peta Credlin and Jeff Kennett, the Prime Minister did have an answer. His answer was superannuation and the big business tax cuts, and today he has capitulated on both of them. What a shameful, shocking, embarrassing thing for this Prime Minister: to have a 10-year tax plan that did not last 10 weeks.

We know that the Prime Minister likes to get up. He is very confident in question time. He loves the sound of his own voice. He loves gesticulating with the glasses. He loves pointing at us with the glasses and marching up and down like Hamlet on the castle wall. But there is no substance to what this Prime Minister was saying today. This is a desperate effort to pretend that what has happened today is not that he was rolled by his own backbench.

The Prime Minister is trying to pretend that consultation is a good thing. Actually it is true: consultation is a great thing. When we develop policy on this side, we talk to our backbench. We talk to Labor Party members. We go out and talk to the industry. We talk to the industry groups. We make sure that when we make a budget announcement we can actually back in that budget announcement. I am not talking about 'out there' to people with vested interests or organisations that have a strong say. We can at least get our own budgets through our own backbench. This Prime Minister does not even have the strength to do that.

We think: is this unusual? No, because this Prime Minister has capitulated at every difficult decision. The right-wingers did not want action on climate change, even though we know the Prime Minister knows that climate change is happening and is a threat, so he has capitulated on that. Senator Bernardi wanted a plebiscite, so the Prime Minister has given him that. Senator Abetz and Kevin Andrews wanted public funding for the no campaign, so he wrote them a $7½ million dollar cheque. The member for Dawson wanted funding cut from Safe Schools; he got that. He wanted changes to superannuation; he got that. Every time the extremists ask the Prime Minister for something, he gives it to them, and every time he tells himself this is the last time. But every one of us knows that you do not win a fight with a bully by giving in to them, because they always come back for more.

This Prime Minister has gone from attack dog to lapdog. He sits. He begs. He rolls over: 'Yes, George. Of course, Tony. More funding, Cory.' You cannot run the country if you have to run your lines past your backbench, you cannot have a vision for the future if you spend your whole time looking over your shoulder, and you cannot lead Australia if your party leads you by the nose.

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