Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the government's focus on itself instead of on the problems affecting Australians—a great choice for a matter of public importance debate.

Whilst it's been great to hear the talking points trotted out by those opposite, I just want to point out a couple of facts. The previous speaker, the member for Riverina, made a good tweet about cricket the other day. He was my cricketing captain, so I have a lot of respect for his very good commentary on cricket. But he made an erroneous statement just then. Obviously, Mr Speaker, as you well know, the highest-taxing governments as a percentage of GDP were both Liberal governments: Howard and Morrison. The Howard government and the Morrison government are the two highest-taxing governments. We just need to remember that from those opposite.

I did notice in the polls recently that the Australian people are starting to realise that these guys are not good when it comes to dealing with the books. We have a Treasurer who is the self-appointed king of car parks in his own electorate, rather than focusing on the Australian people. From memory, only one car park was in Queensland. This bloke gave himself three car parks, so how can he be focusing on what's in the national interest? And he seems to be obsessed with the member for Rankin. He is obsessed, problematically, with the member for Rankin, rather than with doing his own job.

I don't mind if people cluster together; that's what political parties are about. I've seen people cluster together when they don't have a cause; I walked through them this morning, coming up to Parliament House. There is no problem in having a rabble without a cause, but when they're the government clustered together and their only vision seems to be not to be Labor—their whole unifying force is not to be Labor—then that's not good enough and Australians are suffering.

We can talk about the number of jobs available, but it also helps when you slam the borders shut and don't let workers in. People who did 100,000 or 200,000—I'm looking at the member for McMahon—jobs previously, when the borders were open, now have those jobs being done by other people.

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