Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

To those listening out there today: what you're hearing is further evidence of an each-way opposition. We've got an each-way Leader of the Opposition, but this is evidence of an each-way opposition. In 2020 they supported JobKeeper. They march in here in 2021 and they don't support JobKeeper. If the opposition were at the racetrack, they would approach the bookie, look at the board and say, 'I'll have 10 bucks on JobKeeper and I'll have 10 bucks on no JobKeeper.' The bookie would take their money, quite frankly, and it is a quintessentially ridiculous thing to do, but that's what we have.

The other thing that people out there listening to this broadcast can take from this is that, if you were one of the one million small and medium enterprises—businesses—in Australia who took the benefit of JobKeeper and it assisted you with surviving the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, they're not for you. If you are one of the 3.8 million employees who got the benefit of JobKeeper—who, quite frankly, kept their job, kept their connection with their employer because of JobKeeper—they're not for you. What you always have to do with this opposition is look at what they do. Don't listen to what they say.

I was thinking about this, and my mind turned to that Aussie folk rock band Weddings Parties Anything. I was thinking it reminded me of that tune 'Monday's Experts'. Nobody likes a Monday expert. But let me give you some lyrics from that tune. It was off their King Tide album of 1993:

Always know what's best

Always tell you what you should've done

…

Always know what's cooking

How the game was lost and how it could've been won

Well I see them up the shops; I see them down the street …

And when I go up the Pub it's nearly everyone I meet

They're saying I should've done this or I should've done that

But by the time they're finished talking well my beer's are getting flat

Ladies and gentlemen, the beer is flat. Those opposite don't get it. Everyone is an expert in this town on Mondays. Everyone on that side of the chamber is an expert on Mondays. The lyrics go on:

Talking in the tea room

In the worshop and the office talking all around the place

…

Hey they've always got the good oil

Pity you can't put a bet on at the finish of the race

That's the point here. We were facing, as a nation, unprecedented economic conditions. Treasury was estimating unemployment to reach 15 per cent and, if we had not moved quickly, those opposite, operating their well-known modus operandi of taking a bet each way, would have rushed into this place and said, 'The government isn't acting fast enough.' In fact, they were making that call at the time. The then Deputy Prime Minister knows this well; I expect he was sitting down rationally with the Prime Minister and the leadership team and working on this project. But those opposite were like: 'Don't worry about it. We'll have one position today and then, almost as if we can own the 'Monday's Experts' example, we'll have another position later on.' But that's not leadership. You don't get to make decisions 12 months later. You have to make decisions at the time.

And so it caused me to think further: 'What's this about? Why is the member for Fenner so focused on this?' We know what that answer is. The answer is this is an opportunity to unlock those private details of those 10,000 or so businesses who, let's be clear, complied with the law and accessed this payment, keeping employees connected to their business. So my message to everyone listening, aside from the fact that you have effectively got an opposition in Canberra that does one thing today and then makes another decision tomorrow, is that, if they are prepared to seek to access your private, confidential information from a position of opposition today, what would they do if they were ever given the great privilege of governing this country?

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