Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What have we got leading into this break before parliament? Weeks out from the budget we have a government that does not know what it is doing. We have a Prime Minister that says one thing today and one thing tomorrow and gets his office to say something else in the evening. We have a Treasurer that has been put into hiding—let us face it, no-one would ever have thought that you could be worse than Joe Hockey, but Scott Morrison has taken the cake.

No wonder those left-wing journalists like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley are out there saying, 'What is actually going on? What is actually going on when the government doesn't know what it's doing or where it's going?' Each and every day it is contradiction after contradiction, and people are getting fed up with it. They are getting fed up with the fact that we have replaced three-word slogans with 5,000 word theses. But still all we have is a government that contemplates thinking about wondering about what it might do, but might change it: 'We're not sure yet. We'll have to have a look into it.'

What we have seen is the Australian economy go into a bit of paralysis because we are not sure what is going to happen. We are not sure what is going to happen, because there is no leadership on the other side. There is no leadership from the Prime Minister who says everything but does nothing and no leadership from a Treasurer who, fair dinkum, would be lucky to count to eight on a good day.

What we need to do is have a look at what is going on in this country, and what we need to understand is this: it is only Labor that has put forward plans—plans on superannuation, negative gearing and the like. It is Labor that comes to this place and stands up for the millions of people who want a handful of dollars not the other way around like those opposite, who look after a handful of people with millions of dollars.