Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, the other one. National Party blokes just love screaming at women. They love it! We've seen a lot of that today, in question time and just then. I know it's a spirited debate, but I think the public watching question time today were probably a bit disappointed—firstly, with the level of interjections and the screaming and carrying on; it was an absolute fiasco. Secondly, you wasted half of question time when you should've been asking questions on behalf of the Australian people. Most of question time was wasted in this charade. Why? Because you basically didn't have anything else.

It was your one shot in the locker. The Prime Minister is away and you wanted to create some chaos. It was a disappointing sight to see, and I'm sure those up in the gallery were disappointed as well. I just wanted to put that on the record. You asked Minister King a question. She had to come back in and answer your question because you'd stopped her from answering the question earlier. The reality is that, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you didn't really want to hear the answer, because you are so involved; you have so much history here that it's undeniable. So we went through that whole charade that wasted half of question time.

I think you need to focus. If you want some advice from me, you need to focus on asking questions about what's actually going on.

Opposition members interjecting—

Well, it's voluntary. What happened during COVID? Let's be honest. Those opposite were in government for over nine years, and the price of aviation, of getting tickets to fly around regional Australia, to be connected to the major capitals, kept going up and up and up, and then we had COVID. You gave $2 billion of taxpayer funds—the people who are up in the gallery—to Qantas and didn't take any equity. That is an absolute crying shame, and someone at some point has to be accountable for that. Ultimately, you did become accountable for that, because the Australian people said: 'We've had enough of the rorts. We've had enough of the dodgy grant programs. We've had enough of the improper governance of our nation.' Not taking any equity was a massive missed opportunity, and I hope, on behalf of regional Australia, you wish that you had. We're in a situation now where we have to make up for the mess that was created in those previous administrations. Whether you like it or not, you were involved around the cabinet table when those decisions were made, so you have to take some responsibility for that.

As with many other debates these days, those opposite are trying to muddy the waters, trying to put in lot of red herrings, but the reality is that Qatar Airways can come into Darwin and regional Australia. If Qatar wants to have more seats, it can come into the major capitals. To misrepresent that is unfortunate. It is true that their current flights aren't full, but you can't deny that there's a lot of competition in the sector. I'll be talking to Qatar about coming into Darwin; that'd be fantastic, and then they could connect to other areas of Australia.

In the time remaining, I need to talk about regional grants. The responsibility of working in this place, representing Australians, is a privilege. When governments have lost their way morally—when the Prime Minister holds five ministerships and talks to himself in the mirror about what to do on big decisions for our nation—that's a concern. What various audits of the regional programs have found is that they weren't fair or transparent. Under our government they are.

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