Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I will, Mr Speaker. This motion is urgent because people out there in the community are watching this parliament, and they are seeing a rabble. They are seeing a Deputy Prime Minister who, by his own admission, is not validly sitting in this place. They are seeing a Deputy Prime Minister and a minister for agriculture, resources and Northern Australia sitting in this place, and they are asking themselves: how can people in those sectors take this minister seriously when there is such a black cloud hanging over his head?

Already, people are asking themselves about the capacity of this Deputy Prime Minister. In four years in that portfolio, he has not done one thing to help the agriculture community. People in the mining sector and other sectors now have a very low expectation about his capacity to do any more. The government needs to explain, again, what is the difference between the case of Senator Canavan and the case of the current member for New England. I cannot understand the position of the Prime Minister. He heard the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources admit himself that he is a goner in the High Court. He has kicked off his campaign in New England. I say to you, Prime Minister: if he's accepting his demise, it's time you accepted it.

We thought we might hear better from the Prime Minister. We thought he might take some responsibility. He has form in not taking responsibility. His failed NBN project is a perfect example. But we would have thought that, as a Prime Minister of this country, someone holding such high office, he would stand up and take responsibility for the actions of the Deputy Prime Minister. It's apparently everyone else's fault but the Deputy Prime Minister's. It's New Zealand's fault. It's the Labor Party's fault. It's anyone's fault but the Deputy Prime Minister's. He has a responsibility to his constituents. He has a responsibility as Deputy Prime Minister and to the electorate more broadly to concede, admit, accept and take responsibility for his own actions and inactions and step aside both from his portfolio responsibilities and from his right to vote in this place until the High Court has come to a conclusion on the matter he himself and his own government—not the Labor Party, not the opposition, but his own government—has referred to the High Court.

So it's time, Deputy Prime Minister, for you, for the first time in your 10 years in this place—remember that, for 10 years you have sat in this place with a big question mark hanging over your head—to take responsibility for your own actions and, indeed, inactions.

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