Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know you're used to the former seat of McMillan, Deputy Chair, but it's Monash. I'm very pleased that that remarkable change has taken place, which we've worked on for many years—to have the seat changed from McMillan to Monash. To go from one to the other has been pretty good.

Just looking at this motion by Mr Hill—and he is the member for Bruce, not that I didn't know that I was just checking whether you knew! I have got up to 41 negatives that he has accused the government of and, therefore, the nation of. Twenty-four negative statements and not one positive statement. When the world has faced one of the greatest calamities it has ever faced—international debacle; millions of people losing their lives; hundreds of millions losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their businesses, their opportunity; kids missing out on education right around the world. I stand here today and I look around this nation and I understand what Julian Hill is talking about when he talks about these negatives and that things were running a bit rough beforehand. But I've been here long enough to be under quite a few Labor governments and quite a few Liberal governments, and these somewhat broad accusations that affect the daily household lives of individuals—that's what we're here for, how this affects individuals and the opportunities they're going to get into the future.

I have to say, if they're the negatives, why isn't there one dot in here of policy to say, 'As an opposition we think you're wrong, but this is what we'd do'? There are 24 negatives, no positives and no proposition. You'll reply, 'We'll lay that out, before the people of Australia, before the next election.' Don't come in here and just denigrate the nation, Julian. Don't come in here, the member for Bruce, and just say, 'Look, here are all the things I've written down that my staff have found to be wrong.' Don't go to the Prime Minister—and I say this to my constituents and others—and say, 'Here's the problem.' We know the problem.

The members of this House are like ordinary people. They live the problems. We may be privileged, and I understand that. In the broader community we are privileged. But it doesn't mean we are not rubbing shoulders every day with the people we represent. It doesn't mean we don't work every day on their behalf. It doesn't mean we don't understand their goals, their goals for their children, their goals for opportunities not only for their young children but for their grown children. To see families now worrying about their 40-year-old children who don't have jobs, whose businesses are failing, I am concerned, like every member here. What will be the case in a month's time when JobKeeper starts to be wound back? What really will happen? It's not about what Treasury thinks might happen or what we gloss over on what might happen. In my electorate of Monash I am dealing with real people, real businesses, real jobs.

I am rather proud of governments of this nation, both state and federal, in the way they have had to respond very quickly. Were they going to make mistakes? Amen, yes, they were. I say to everybody who wants to sincerely criticise the leaders of this nation: what would you have done on that day, at that time, when confronted with exactly the same propositions? What would the member for Bruce have done had he been in a leadership position when he was confronted with these propositions? Perhaps he wouldn't be sitting down spending hours a day working with his staff to find every negative to bring this nation down.

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to build the nation up. I'm going to build my electorate up. I'm going to be proud of my state of Victoria and be proud of this nation as it fits into the world. Hopefully, we will be able to stand tall around the world and be a beacon of light for them to say, 'This is the way you should go if you want to manage your economy.'

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