Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This MPI is about focus and delivery—delivering for the Australian people. The member for Bruce has already outlined how this government has comprehensively failed to deliver for the Australian people during the pandemic. They failed to deliver a national quarantine system. They failed to deliver vaccines on time when the Australian population needed them. They failed to deliver RATs. And they're failing right now in aged care—the member for Bruce covered all this—and this is an inexcusable failure by this government.

But I want to concentrate on something else that's been canvassed a lot in question time today, which is this government's failure on the most important duty of a federal government—that is, ensuring the defence and national security of this nation. They love to drape the flag around themselves. They love to hide behind khaki when it comes close to an election. And you saw the disgraceful effort from the defence minister today—disgraceful; utterly unprecedented. It's a brave choice by the Liberal Party, given their great hero is Robert Gordon Menzies, a man known to be a Nazi appeaser—a man known to have advocated for doing a deal with Hitler 10 days after Poland was invaded. Ten days after Poland was invaded—

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