Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The topic for today's debate is the government's focus on announcement, not delivery. The only hard thing about that is choosing which of the literally hundreds of examples of exaggeration, spin, fake announcements and utter nonsense to talk about today. We just sat through question time and we heard about the government's new slogan. They spent $15 million on an advertising agency to come up with 'Comeback' and they're now putting it on bus shelters and billboards across the country, congratulating themselves.

I want to take a non-traditional approach for this debate just for a minute. The situation the country faces is deadly serious. We're in the midst of the first recession for 30 years and growth, as we hear from the government all the time, is only part of the story. By Christmas, on their own projections, there'll be 1.8 million of our fellow Australians living off unemployment benefits of some sort. Unemployment and underemployment are at record levels, the highest ever, in this country. The economy was weak before the recession, and the government's best outcome they hope for is: it'll take four years to get back to where we were.

We've got the biggest budget deficit ever—$1.7 trillion of Liberal debt we're hurtling towards with nothing to show for it: no reform, no jobs plan. We've got a water, climate and extinction crisis; bushfires and floods that we're not prepared for; and the most serious set of strategic challenges and circumstances since World War II. Power is shifting rapidly round the region. It's economic power, military power. We've got a trade crisis. We've got billions of dollars of our exports sitting in ships off the coast of China, our major trading partner. The relationship with China is the worst it's been for over 50 years because this incompetent bunch of marketing fools have so mismanaged the diplomatic relationship that there are no ministers to even talk to other ministers. They've outsourced foreign policy to backbenchers, because the foreign minister's so weak she doesn't say anything.

At the very moment our nation needs capable leaders, strong government, adult government, what do we have? We have a government led by a failed marketing guy, a fake—an ad man without a plan, the guy who was sacked as the head of Tourism Australia; all announcement, no delivery; all about the photo-op, no follow-up. He's been in quarantine for two weeks, and what does he choose to do? You get one person on the island with you. You might take the head of the public service. You might take the national security adviser, given what's happening around the world. You might take your economics adviser. You might take the Chief Scientist and learn something—facts, evidence—or the head of the APS. But, no, he takes his personal photographer. It sounds farcical, but it's true. What do taxpayers get for that? Fresh from the fake chicken coop photo before he went into quarantine, we've got photographs of the Prime Minister riding an exercise bike; running around in his shorts and half a suit, looking deranged; and wandering around alone during the day at home by himself in a suit. Then there was the question time special, of course: four flags—you could have fit one more in, maybe, if you'd tried—and a crotch shot for the national parliament. Well done, Prime Minister!

He's all about politics, and, you have to admit, he's very good at politics. Truth and facts don't matter anymore. He's like his BFF. He's like a mini-Trump: you just say stuff, and you announce but you don't deliver. Where's the national integrity commission? Anyone? Eighth year of government and no national integrity commission? He went one better there; he actually cut the budget of the Auditor-General, the one independent watchdog we have! What about aged care? 'I'm going to fix the aged-care waiting list.' Every time, every budget, every mid-year budget, he announces it. There are over 100,000 senior Australians waiting for home care; 28,000 people have died waiting for home care in the last two years. Bringing home 36,000 stranded Australians by Christmas—who believes that? Is that actually going to happen? A $1.5 billion manufacturing strategy—this from the mob who chased the car industry out of Australia. They've suddenly decided manufacturing matters! Of $1.5 billion, they're only going to spend three per cent this year. It's a fake announcement. The submarines—how are they going? They were going to be $50 billion and delivered on time. They're running behind time and they're now going to be $80 billion. Who knows? Bushfire recovery—a $2 billion fund and people are living in caravans.

The Prime Minister is a fake, and people are working him out. But you know what? He's not just a fake; he's a nasty, mean fake, because the one thing he's delivered out of this budget—on time, on budget—is a cut to JobSeeker. The most vulnerable people in the country will be living on $40 a day under this Prime Minister, the biggest single act in the history of the Commonwealth that any government has taken to push 1.5 million Australians into poverty. Australians deserve much better than this nasty, fake Prime Minister. (Time expired)

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