Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a momentous week in this building. We are approaching the end of a parliamentary week in which we saw, on its first day, on Monday, a change of the Prime Minister of this nation. On Monday night, some Australians would have gone to sleep with one Prime Minister in office and woken up with another one. In all of the self-congratulations over the last week or so, one opportunity has been missed. The new Prime Minister could have stood up and said, 'A new leader of this country necessitates a new direction.' Instead of saying that a new Prime Minister necessitates a change in policy direction, we have had the Prime Minister stand up time and time again and confirm for the Australian people that he remains a captive of the fruit loops and the loonies that occupy the far right of his party. Instead of a reset, we are getting re-rerun of all of the policies.

The signature failures of this government over the last two years were the 2014 budget and the 2015 budget. The new Prime Minister's fingerprints are all over those budgets. He stands up time and time again and says he supports every single part of the budget. All of the catastrophe that we saw in those two budgets handed down by the member for North Sydney is completely owned by the new Prime Minister. The leader has changed, the Prime Minister has changed in this nation, but the policies have not. The policies of this country will not change unless there is a change of government. We need a totally new direction, when you consider the unemployment rate going up, when you consider all of the economic failures of those opposite. If the Australian people want a new direction, they need a new government entirely.