Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind the Prime Minister that her minister for regional Australia stated today that the government's proposal for media regulation could have been 'better handled'. Does the Prime Minister believe that to be a criticism of her or her minister for communications or both? What confidence can the Australian people have in a government whose cabinet ministers are now failing to support or openly criticising each other?

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's not interject on the Prime Minister getting the call.

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

The member for McEwen is warned. The Prime Minister has the call.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Getting big and important public policy reforms done is never easy. We know that as a government because we have been a government that has sought to shape the nation for the future and to make it stronger and fairer. It is not surprising to me that, when we are talking about something as contested as media reform, we have seen a fast and furious debate, and if we look around the world it is not just us. What would the Deputy Leader of the Opposition have said to a process in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom that had the final deal crunched between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition at 2.30 in the morning? Presumably, she would have criticised the process. But members of her sister a political party that saw the need to act in the public interest and actually get a reform through presumably thought engaging in that process was important for the people of the United Kingdom. When you are dealing with these big, complex reforms—

Ms Julie Bishop interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has asked her question.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

of course there are times when the process has a bit of stress on it. Prime Minister Cameron has found that. In this parliament on a number of occasions we have dealt with bills late at night; we have dealt with bills under some pressure. But, unless the opposition is going today to go out and use about Prime Minister Cameron every word, every insult, every piece of criticism that they have used against the government, then they will stand condemned for the hypocrisy that this is, the absolute hypocrisy. There is Prime Minister Cameron with a model of intervention in the media, much stronger than anything ever contemplated by this government, and what do we hear? Absolute silence—because it is hypocrisy, pure and simple. The motivation here is no more or less than a bit of craven political advantage. The one thing that they will never do, that they will never bother about—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will return to the question.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

that they will never worry about is of course the public interest.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition seeking a document to be tabled?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Speaker. I note the Prime Minister is reading from a very closely typed, several-page document and I ask if she could table the document from which she is reading word for word.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the Prime Minister reading from a document?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The document I had in front of me was 'MPs vie to claim press regulation win', from the Financial Times by George Parker, Political Editor, 18 March 2013. That was the document I had in front of me. I table it.