Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

This is a debate about leadership, and, again, I quote former Prime Minister Turnbull, who said, when it comes to the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition: 'He doesn't have the courage to make a call. Always preferring to be hanging back and muttering about the risks rather than offering an alternative. Happy to push on open doors only.' Then there was a warning for the Australian people about this person who offered to be the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. Former Prime Minister Turnbull said this about why he worked to make sure that the now Leader of the Opposition did not take over from him as Prime Minister back in 2018: 'I thought Dutton would run off to the right. I thought he would do a lot of damage as the Prime Minister of Australia in a short period.'

We know that this Leader of the Opposition is not prime ministerial material. He is not up to the job. It is not prime ministerial to joke about Pacific island neighbours having water lapping at their front doors. It was not prime ministerial when, 17 years ago today, the Leader of the Opposition, from this chamber, boycotted the National Apology to the Stolen Generations. It was not prime ministerial when he went to Collie to talk about his nuclear plant. It was not prime ministerial of him to run off when the people of Collie came up to him and said, 'Let's talk about your plan'. He ran away from the people he sought to impose a multibillion dollar nuclear power plant on.

I'm happy to debate with the Leader of the Opposition in this MPI right now. I'm happy to debate him in Central Park, in Collie, about his plans. We could go and get a coffee at the Wagon; we could have a good chat with the community there. Something tells me the Leader of the Opposition will not be going back to Collie between now and the federal election. The last time he was there, he was literally run out of town.

You might say, 'Oh, you would say that.' Well, what are his WA Liberal colleagues saying? This is, of course, when the WA Liberal Party aren't busy preselecting former One Nation candidates to be their candidate in the state seat of Perth. That's right; they've shown my community so much respect that they've had to knock on the door to One Nation and say, 'Hey, have you got any leftovers from that long lunch that we can use?' A former One Nation candidate is who the WA Liberals have chosen. I note that the Leader of the Nationals is here. The Leader of the Nationals and I probably agree on one thing, which is that the WA Liberals have a few problems when they preselect candidates in the metropolitan area. There are a few other candidates that he may think are better than some of the candidates the Liberals have preselected in the West. This is what the WA Leader of the Liberal Party says, when it comes to the Leader of the Opposition, from an article by Paul Garvey in today's national newspaper, the Australian:

While she has a good relationship with federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, she does not have any expectations that he will be joining her on the campaign trail.

I'm not surprised. But she offers a little glimmer of hope at the end. There's a quote from Libby Mettam that reads:

I imagine that Peter Dutton's popularity will continue to grow …

Well, it can probably only go in one direction.

We talk about governments—how they are, and how they perform. Again, here we are, one year on from the anniversary, the birthday party, for the Nemesis program, where they all sat down. It wasn't an accident that they walked into the interviews. It wasn't an accident that they went into those ABC studios to do those interviews. We saw, in that program, a reminder of what we got under those opposite. We got the robodebt scheme, causing serious harm to thousands of Australians. We got a government that refused to legislate net zero, saying that it wasn't on their agenda. We then saw, during the election campaign in 2022, that they refused to support an increase to the minimum wage for the lowest-paid Australians. They thought it was a step too far to legislate for 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave. But they thought it was okay to increase childcare fees by 41 per cent. They thought it was okay to walk out the door in 2022 leaving a trillion dollars of debt behind.

When they were a fresh thinking, newly elected government back in 2014, what were the great ideas they had, the fresh ideas for Australia? One was a $7 GP tax and 900 cuts and changes to Medicare. Then of course there were ideas that gave us other challenges, such as when the now Leader of the Opposition personally signed off on the abolition of Health Workforce Australia, the body that was supposed to give us forward planning for our health system for the future—not a great way of getting themselves, as they say, in their terms, 'back on track'.

But the Leader of the Opposition's failures do not stop there. We all remember, back in 2004, when John Howard was re-elected, and he had promised he would be 'keeping interest rates low'. So who did he get to help him with that mission when interest rates were 5.5 per cent? I know that's higher than they are today. He recruited the Leader of the Opposition to help him keep interest rates low. Then we saw rates go up by 0.25 per cent to 5.75 per cent, and again on 2 August 2006 they went up by 2.5 per cent to six per cent. It doesn't stop there. They went up again to 6.5 per cent, then up again to 6.75 per cent. If you want to know what sort of interest rate you'd get under this Leader of the Opposition, you can look at his record as Assistant Treasurer: an interest rate of 6.75 per cent.

Now we get to the cuts. We know, when it comes to their plans, that they will savagely cut across states and territories. I only need to look at what we've seen in my community in Perth, where the WA GST deal has delivered some $6.2 billion additional revenue. They have plans to cut some 1,700 public servants from Western Australia, most of which are based at the Australian Tax Office and Medicare, in my electorate. I think the Australian people like getting their tax returns quickly, and they like getting their Medicare benefits. All of that will slow down under the plans of those opposite.

What Australians know is that they will be worse off under the Leader of the Opposition. They'll be worse off without a tax cut for every taxpayer. They'll be worse off without energy bill relief. They'll be worse off without cheaper medicines. They'll be worse off without fee-free TAFE. They'll be worse off without Medicare urgent care clinics, which this Leader of the Opposition has said they will close across the country. People will be worse off without our initiative, a three-day guarantee, which those opposite voted against in this chamber just a few hours ago. They'll be worse off with higher student debt under the Liberals and Nationals. They'll be worse off because there will be no increases to the minimum wage. They'll be worse off because those opposite will go around the country sacking public servants, making vicious cuts to health, Medicare, universities and TAFE— (Time expired)

See this speech in context