Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How long will the Prime Minister last in question time today? Yesterday, under pressure, he got tetchy, he got grumpy and he shut down question time—he had a little tanty! And he was first out the door. He ran away. When this Prime Minister is under pressure, when the going gets tough, the Prime Minister gets going.

But today it's his special day: it's his third anniversary of knifing his mate Malcolm Turnbull. He's a cunning politician. He climbed to the top of this eight-year-old government. 'I'm ambitious for him,' he said, with his arm around his mate; 'I've got no ambition to lead.' Well, that turned out to be true, didn't it!

Three years, we've had, to see the character of this bloke over there: his blame-shifting, his incompetence, his refusal to take responsibility—always too little, too late. We've seen it with the pandemic. The first line of defence is quarantine; he failed on that. The second line of defence is enough vaccines; he's failed on that. And so Australians are locked down, they're locked in and they're locked out, because of this bloke over there. But the pattern is clear. We saw it on bushfires—Hawaii; he doesn't hold a hose—and now on Afghanistan, with tragic consequences.

It's not a shiny new government. This bloke brought you robodebt; the aged-care cuts; a trillion dollars of Liberal debt, with nothing to show for it; falling wages; the COVIDSafe app; corruption, rorts and waste. We've had eight years of this, and we can't risk another three of this nasty, shallow, superficial bully. He's a fake.

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

It being almost 2 pm, in accordance with standing order 43 the time for members' statements has concluded.