Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's political game playing is costing Australian families and businesses. Electricity prices, groceries, mortgages and rents are all surging. Despite this, the Prime Minister's priority is to pursue a divisive Canberra-based Voice proposal while refusing to directly condemn comments that Australians are either racist or stupid. When will the Prime Minister admit his incompetence and mishandling of issues that are hurting Australians and dividing our country?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Macnamara is warned. There will be no interjecting before any minister answers a question. I give the call to the Prime Minister.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I await their points of order about sledging from this dispatch box after that question. I await it as I draw everyone's attention to the nature of that question. It says a lot about the character of this opposition. It is negative. It is angry. It is hostile. It seeks to divide. It never seeks to bring people together. And this comes at a time when—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left will cease interjecting.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we have figures showing that employment has increased by 64,900 and labour participation is up to 67 per cent—a record. More than two-thirds of Australians are participating in the labour market, with the unemployment rate in August remaining at 3.7 per cent. That is the envy of the world, and now more than 550,000 jobs have been created on our watch since we came to office.

What we have opposite, just like we had with the Housing Australian Future Fund legislation earlier, is an obsession with voting 'no' to everything, an obsession with just being negative. This is including an obsession with being negative about the referendum that Australians will get to vote in on 14 October.

Yesterday, as part of my job as Prime Minister, I chaired the National Science and Technology Council meeting. And yesterday, along with the science minister, we had a terrific meeting. The NSTC brings together the Chief Scientist and all of the best scientific brains in this country. Yesterday we heard from Mikaela Jade, a Dharug woman who has done research about science and the impact of First Nations science. She spoke about how, when Europeans came to south-west Sydney, they named Cabramatta after the Indigenous Australians eating the cohbra grub. The reason they were eating the cohbra grub, they found out many years later, was because it provided an antidote to smallpox. And now in the United States they have found that it is an antidote to superbugs. It's an example of where, if we're just prepared to listen, prepared to embrace and prepared to be positive, this can be a win for Indigenous Australians but also a win for our nation.