Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

It is not McWho; it is McKew—Maxine McKew, the parliamentary secretary and the member for Bennelong, and it pains me to say that. She has been silent on this, and that is what is really disturbing. It has been left to the Deputy Prime Minister to go out and launch personal attacks against the coalition because we are asking what the government is actually going to do. It is all well and good—and we support buying some interim relief, and that is exactly what it is; $22 million is interim relief—but what will happen on 31 December? Do they all shut down without anyone knowing? There is no plan. They have talked about it. During Senate estimates, Senator Hanson-Young asked and was assured by the department that a plan was ‘alive’ and that the department were looking at this live issue. I say we need now to get a second opinion. We need to bring the defibrillators in. We need to put in an IV and maybe ask a proper doctor to come in and look at what is wrong with this government, because clearly the parliamentary secretary, the minister and the Prime Minister have been asleep at the wheel. Senator Collins spoke about how many warnings there have been. There was a credit crunch and she said that, in the event of a credit crunch, ABC was at risk. Well, the credit crunch came and what did they do? They did not do anything. The mums and dads of Australia are living in fear of your economic incompetence and your indifference. The fear that they are living with has been met with the classic—