Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I looked at this matter of public importance, I thought to myself: what is going through the minds of the opposition? They're literally consulting Twitter based arguments now; opposition via Twitter is their approach. They literally had someone in their leader's office who was such a genius that they turned around and thought, 'We'll do a motion saying they don't show any leadership.' They thought it was so brilliant, so clever. It went through the brains trust of stupidity. It was exactly the same sort of behaviour that Speaker Pelosi demonstrated in the US House of Representatives today in tearing up the State of the Union speech. In the end, what they actually showed was not strength, credibility or even their best arguments. What they actually showed was the juvenile nature that governs this opposition. They have no sense of understanding what matters to the Australian people or the issues that affect them, except for juvenile games.

Let's look at the leadership that this government provides. Look at the resilience of the Australian economy. It doesn't happen by accident and it certainly doesn't happen under a Labor government. It happens because you have leaders in positions of responsibility—the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—leading the economic debate to make sure we are in the best position to steward the Australian economy to deliver for the Australian people. We know the context that we're now in. We've obviously had a significant drought that continues to put great pressure on one of our chief primary industry exports, the agriculture sector. Yes, we've had fires, and we know every day that that's having an impact on small and regional towns, on the tourism sector, on forestry and on retail as well as many of the other important and critical industries that support our country. And, of course, we have the coronavirus at the same time, which, again, is impacting our tourism and our education sectors.

Against all of those challenges, the Australian economy remains strong because we have come to this parliament, and over the term of this government and in previous terms of government in this parliament—

Dr Mulino interjecting—

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