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

This parliament has no confidence in this Prime Minister. You know that no-one on this side has confidence in the Prime Minister, and what we also know is that half the people on the other side have no confidence in this Prime Minister. If they weren't such lions in the party room and lambs—or sheep—in here, they would join us in voting on this motion that this parliament has no confidence in this Prime Minister. This horror show has gone on long enough. It's bad for the country and it's bad for Australian families to have a government so divided and so unable to govern.

Australians are sick to death of it. They're sick of power prices and pollution going up. They're sick of wages flat-lining. They're sick of the cuts to health and education. They're sick of the chaos in aged care and child care. They're sick of it. And, all the while, all the Liberals can do is focus on themselves, focus on their own ambitions. Today the Prime Minister is boasting about what a great job he is doing. If he is doing such a great job, why did half his colleagues vote against him today? And, of course, he goes straight to attacking the Leader of the Opposition for his background as a union leader. I'll tell you what, I would stand beside someone who has spent his working life defending Australian working people before I would stand beside someone who has spent his life as a merchant banker!

Labor is united. Labor stands ready to govern, because for five years now we have shown unity and we have shown discipline. Under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition, we have the better policies and we have the better people. And we saw it in those by-elections that the Prime Minister said were a test of leadership. As it happens, yes, they were a test of leadership, weren't they? We have the better policies in tax, with bigger tax cuts for low- and middle-income Australians. Millions of them would be almost twice as well off under Labor's tax policies. Health, education, industrial relations, environment, energy and climate change—we have better policies in all of these areas than the government, because they're so busy focusing on themselves.

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