David Feeney (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday, amidst the circus, we saw the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence decide that it would be an exciting time to announce one of Australia's strategically vital shipbuilding contracts. Amongst the many marvels of yesterday is the fact that we were here as a prorogued parliament, brought back so that we could sit here at centre stage in the spotlight to debate the ABCC legislation—legislation the Prime Minister told us was worthy of a double dissolution election and legislation the Prime Minister told us should fix the attention of our nation. Here we were, in the middle of day 1 of this, and the government and the Prime Minister himself changed the topic. They changed the topic, and so suddenly we found ourselves talking about shipbuilding.

This bizarre timing by the Prime Minister and his defence minister to make such an announcement was nothing more than panic driven and cynical politics in an attempt to shore up South Australian Liberal seats for the upcoming election. Sadly, we have seen Liberal Party politics poison our shipbuilding contracts again and again. It was of course the politics of a captain's call that originally sent the Liberal Party promise to build the submarines in Adelaide to the depths. Instead, we had a captain's call to go to Japan. Then, in the midst of the collapsing leadership of Prime Minister Abbott, we saw that turned into a competitive evaluation process. Now it would seem— (Time expired)