Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Today's print media runs comments from numerous members of the PM's own government airing grievances about the internal workings of the Liberal Party, including today in The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun

Mr Chester interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport is interjecting loudly into my ear. I cannot hear the question. I will ask the Manager of Opposition Business to resume and, if there is a repeat of it, I will have to take action. The Manager of Opposition Business can begin his question again.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The question is to the Prime Minister. Today's print media includes comments from a large number of members of the Prime Minister's own government airing grievances about the internal workings of the Liberal government, including in The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, TheAdvertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Courier Mail, the Financial Review, and The Australian. They all have examples of this. Prime Minister, when thousands of people are losing their jobs at Toyota and Holden, why are members of the government only talking about themselves?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not so long ago that the Leader of the Opposition spoke at the Press Club—indeed, last week, just the day before I did—and he said that he was going to be focused on people rather than politics, and what we see is one cheap shot after another. How long did that last? Our policies are very clear, very plain, focused on jobs, investment, economic growth, improving and expanding the opportunities for hardworking Australian families. Everything we are doing is focused on that. We are trying to open up more export markets. We have opened up some big ones. The foreign minister just described the very real practical ways in which those big new markets have provided more opportunities for Australian businesses to get ahead and employ more Australians. And what we are doing is ensuring, or seeking to ensure, that businesses get a tax break so that they will invest more and employ more. And what we are seeking to do is build the infrastructure around the country—$50 billion and more in infrastructure—not to speak of completing the NBN years and years ahead of time from what the Labor Party would have done. So we are getting on with the job, and everything we are doing will generate more investment and more jobs.

What does Labor present? They do not have one single policy—not one—which would encourage one single business to invest one more dollar. They do not have any policies that will encourage employment. Indeed, they want to have higher taxes, more regulations, higher debt, fewer markets and fewer opportunities to get ahead and, to cap all of that, they have policies that are guaranteed to make energy unaffordable and unreliable. I have to say this: the opposition leader is consistent on one thing alone—he is against jobs, he is against investment, he is against the opportunities that Australians today and generations to come deserve and will only come through more investment, more economic growth, bigger markets and wider horizons for Australians to build their businesses and employ more Australians here. That is what we are doing. Labor is standing in the way—every single policy calculated to stop employment, stop investment and stop the growth we need.