Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

One of my favourite movies is The Blues Brothers. During the home quarantine that I had to do in Canberra I had the opportunity to look at it again. One of the best scenes, I think, is when Carrie Fisher's character confronts Jake about not turning up for their wedding. Jake comes up with excuses: 'Honest, I ran out of gas. I had a flat tyre. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. It wasn't my fault, I swear to God.' Remind you of anyone? It reminded me of the bloke who sits over there—the Prime Minister. It reminded me of him and his favourite phrases that he uses time and time again: 'It's not my job;' 'It's not my fault;' 'I don't hold a hose;' 'It's not a race;' 'The dog ate my colour-coded spreadsheet.'

There's never any leadership or any honesty from this Prime Minister. We've seen it from bushfires through to robodebt through to the failure on vaccines and quarantine. This is a Prime Minister who won't take responsibility for his own words, a Prime Minister who is truth hesitant. He said we are at the front of the queue for vaccines, but we know we've been running last in the developed world and we are not in the top 80 countries. He said four million Australians would be vaccinated by March, and he missed that target by more than 3½ million. He said that aged-care workers and residents and people in disability care would be vaccinated by Easter—he didn't say which year, to be fair!—but we know that, as of today, if you look at aged-care workers and people in disability care, less than half of that cohort have been vaccinated. He said repeatedly, 'It's not a race', but when called to account for that he had the hide to say, 'That was about TGA approvals', even though the Therapeutic Goods Administration had already approved the only two vaccines that are available in Australia—AstraZeneca and Pfizer—some period before he repeatedly said that.

This is a Prime Minister who never takes responsibility. He treats his own words like reptiles treat their young; he pushes them out into the world and then never has anything to do with them ever again. And, if somehow he does run into them down the track, there isn't so much as a flicker of recognition; it's, 'I don't know where that came from.' We saw it again today, repeatedly. This is a Prime Minister who never leads.

The most important area has of course been the failure on rolling out the vaccine and the ongoing failure on national quarantine. As we speak today, more than 18 months into this pandemic, there is not so much as a hole being dug for a new purpose-built quarantine centre anywhere in the country—not one. We know that hotel quarantine doesn't work. We know that hotels were built for tourists. And we know the absolute failure when it comes to vaccines. Today in parliament I spoke about my friend Khalil Ibrahim, whose parents died last week, on Tuesday and then on Friday. He has buried both his mum and his dad, who were due to get their vaccines this week. These are elderly Australians who weren't looked after by a government that was complacent and incompetent when it came to the rollout of the vaccine.

But we see it in other areas as well. Today we hear of a mass vaccination hub that is being established in Penrith—a good thing—but where is the one in Blacktown, in Mt Druitt and in those communities where the member for Greenway and the member for Chifley have been crying out for a mass vaccination hub? It appears political decisions even go down to that level. This is a government obsessed by colour-coded spreadsheets, a government for whom every action is about the politics. But it is not just when it comes to these issues because there's much more.

What we've had after the actions of the member for Dawson, Senator Canavan, the member for Hughes, is the Prime Minister say, 'We voted for the motion.' They did not say once the name 'George Christensen' or 'member for Dawson'. Not once. It was like Voldemort—you couldn't say his name. And the Deputy Prime Minister gave it up this morning when he said 'we don't want to poke the bear' when it comes to the member for Dawson. Just like the member for Dawson attending the rally in Mackay against lockdowns, against vaccinations, he said that was about freedom of speech. That's not leadership.

But we saw it as well, of course, earlier this year, with the only world leader who failed to condemn the attack on the Capitol building. The Prime Minister said, 'I think what is important now is not for me to be providing lectures to anybody; that is not my job.' We saw it in response to questions about his friend Brian Houston being invited to the White House. He said that is just 'gossip' and wouldn't answer the questions.

We saw it in the circumstances around Brittany Higgins. Here we have circumstances whereby the AFP has concluded its criminal investigations into the events just metres from the Prime Minister's office. Charges have been laid and will undergo due process. The Gaetjens inquiry, established by this Prime Minister to find out what his own office knew about these incidents, has now had five months and 27 days and we still have not had a response. At the March 4 Justice we saw a Prime Minister say protesters should be 'grateful' that they weren't 'shot', like in other parts of the world.

We have seen no accountability from this Prime Minister about sports rorts or about 'pork and ride'. In a fit of anger he sacked Christine Holgate right here but pretends that didn't happen. He pretends that he didn't say electric vehicles would 'end the weekend', but we know that that occurred. But significantly as well, he said, 'I commend New South Wales for not having a lockdown.' The consequences are half the country is in lockdown. Expecting him to take responsibility is like expecting a hologram to catch a ball; it is just not going to happen. There is a pattern of behaviour. When there's a problem: (1) deny its existence until it is a crisis; (2) when it does become a crisis, blame someone else; (3) when all else fails, rewrite history and pretend you haven't said what is on the record. There is no shame—all smirk—from this Prime Minister, and no accountability. Even the national cabinet, designed to hide information, has been ruled as not appropriate. We see the ongoing member for Bowman—continuing to chair the committee that the Prime Minister said he'd be removed from—being replaced by a bloke in the fine tradition of the current member for Bowman as the LNP candidate, rather than a woman.

In bad times, leaders rise. This one has shrunk into nothingness. The Prime Minister is always there for the photo op, never there for the follow-up. Labor have been constructive. When we announced our $300 incentive last week, what was the Prime Minister's gut instinct? It was not, 'That's an idea; we will consider it'; it was just no—just rejecting it, even though Lieutenant General Frewen has said it is a positive idea that should be considered as well as other measures. This Prime Minister is shameless, he is deceptive, and the more Australians look at him, the more they recognise the fact that this Prime Minister simply isn't up to the high office that he holds. (Time expired)

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