Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Malcolm Turnbull announced his leadership challenge, he said, 'Australia needs a style of leadership that respects the peoples' intelligence.' He said that he would 'explain these complex issues', and then set out a course of action that we believed should taken and make a case for it. Well, that did not last very long. Indeed, it would appear that, whilst a lot of people had hoped Malcolm Turnbull might in fact be able to change the Liberal Party, it is in fact the Liberal Party that has changed Malcolm Turnbull.

We now have a Prime Minister who is unable to articulate a vision for this nation. There is no plan on the table. All we have now is this ridiculously confused economic message coming from the government. Just this week we had the Prime Minister ruling out any capital gains tax discount whatsoever. He absolutely ruled it out only to find his own office putting it back on the table a few hours later. Some leaked talking points also confirmed that the PM was wrong.

Then we had the Assistant Treasurer saying that Labor's negative gearing reforms would mean housing prices would go up for all Australians, after the Prime Minister had been out insisting throughout his not-so-scary scare campaign that in fact the reverse was true. This is a government that is absolutely failing to convince the nation it has any economic plan whatsoever.