Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

It does not surprise me that the Labor Party does not understand our agenda, because, throughout the entire federal campaign and, indeed, for the months before the federal election, they were effectively on their coronation tour. They were just zipping around the country, waving in their regal way, doing their lap of honour, so confident that they were going to be on this side of the House that they barely bothered to look at the positive plans which the coalition was putting forward to the Australian people. I want to use my time today to talk about some of those positive plans that we've already enacted and that we will continue to enact.

The other thing that I noticed about the Leader of the Opposition's commentary and, indeed, the nature of this MPI in and of itself is that, effectively, they are saying to the Australian people, 'You got it wrong at the election.' 'We deserve to win,' they're saying. 'Look at that rabble. Why did you vote for them?' Well, can I tell you what? They did vote for the coalition. The quiet Australians supported us. They supported our agenda and they didn't want the Labor agenda. The Labor Party shouldn't be so arrogant, as they've been displaying today, given that the vote which the Labor Party got at the federal election, despite their arrogance, despite the coronation tour, was actually the lowest in 100 years. I reckon that, if you're a political party that has got the lowest primary vote in 100 years, you would be a bit less arrogant than this Labor Party is today and maybe a little bit more humble in terms of listening to the election result and listening to the Australian people about what they actually wanted.

And they did not want the high-taxing agenda which the Labor Party was promising. They did not want weak borders, which the Labor Party was promising. They did not want rents to go up. They did not want the housing market to collapse, which the Labor Party was promising. Rather, they wanted the agenda which we put forward: to keep the economy strong, to build infrastructure, to provide record funding in health and education, to continue to fund more medicines, to continue to keep our borders secure—I could go on. And I will go on in my remaining time and detail some of these plans that we actually did offer the Australian people.

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