Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I am wearing a tie that my five-year-old daughter gave me for Father's Day. While I was flying to Canberra yesterday, Father's Day, it had me thinking. Here we are in parliament, all of us sharing a vision of making this great country of ours even greater for our children and for all future generations. Doing so requires us to focus on those things that matter. Those opposite would contend that what matters most to Australia is rewriting the plaques that sit on historical statues, or they would promote the false gods who believe in a world of 100 per cent renewables or they will play parliamentary games hypothesising on section 44 of the Constitution.

But in the real world we have a crisis on the Korean peninsula and we have ISIL in our region. At home we have businesses and families being smashed by higher power prices. What really matters in Australia is national security: controlling our borders and ensuring our communities and families are safe. What really matters in Australia is economic management: ensuring that we have jobs and that family budgets can be reduced. This is what our country expects of this parliament. Happy Father's Day.