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

Well, we are all stunned by the comprehensive defence that the minister is putting up on his measures today—sitting there like an Easter Island statue, looking blankly at us all. What is there to talk about? What is there for the parliament to talk about? We all know that this budget is an exercise in incoherence, desperation and defeat. We knew that from the moment the Treasurer got up here and started with his very positive message that families had not had a pay rise and how sorry he was about how tough times were. Four years of this government, and all it has is an opening with an apology about how bad things have got and this vague hope that things might get better in the future. Why would you believe this government when the very next day it rolls in here with its zombie measures, and what is its defence for them? Nothing. 'I move the motion.' It is like, 'Whoa.' And this guy wants to be Prime Minister, Treasurer or something like that.

We have this comprehensive defence of these measures that have been hanging around. They are not called zombie measures by mistake. They are zombie measures in every sense of the word—cuts that were in there which were calculated in the budget and which were spreading uncertainty within the community. Lots of people worried about their family incomes. Lots of people worried about what was going to happen to their benefits for months and months or years and years on end—a thousand days of uncertainty spreading through the economy. Those on the backbench are all up there, all voting for them, all going out there in the community and defending them. And what do we get after all of that? This sort of stunned silence from the minister—not even a word of defence.

We know the Prime Minister was there on Sky News or Fran Kelly. Fran said, 'Are they bad measures?' Mr Turnbull gave one of his great orations: 'It's not a question of whether they're good or bad. They were measures which we believed had merit.' So they have given up. It is like The Grand Old Duke of York, isn't it? He had 10,000 men—10,000 backbenchers. And up they went to the top of the hill and everybody sort of waited around for something to happen for 1,000 days. And then—

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