Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

With blood on their hands, as Senator Abetz announces. All of us have been around politics long enough to know that, as we can see even with Mr Tanner, that does not hold for a united team. But far be it from me that I be distracted by the good interjections of Senator Abetz. I, like everyone, was glued to Sky’s televising of the press conference of the new Prime Minister. I was bewildered that this Prime Minister and party, who were up all night plotting and planning the new position of the Prime Minister, did not take the opportunity on day 1 to fix the problem. Why would you remove former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd if you are not going to change your policies or the direction of the party?

You have simply made a political manoeuvre as a reaction to the polls. There is no conviction of policy. You spent all of question time defending the old policies of border protection—which brings me to the point. While you were scrutinising leaders I would have thought you would have scrutinised your own leader here in the Senate. There is one who should have been dropped too. Maybe he will be yet in a reshuffle. If you want to drop leaders on the basis of polls, there probably has not been a leader who has plunged you deeper in polls than the leader in the Senate and his portfolio. No-one has mismanaged his people portfolio worse than Senator Evans. But why would I think you would be discerning at all? Why would you be discerning about who is leading your party and who is running your policies when you have just made Prime Minister the person who has managed the worst waste of taxpayers’ funds to the tune of billions and billions of dollars since Federation? That will be her badge of dishonour.

And don’t think it has been lost on the Australian people. The rhetoric that came out of that press conference! Not one policy was changed when you had the opportunity to do it on day 1. Just go back and look at the first press conference of our change of leadership. We did it for a purpose. The purpose was to drop the ETS. There was no purpose in putting Ms Gillard there unless you changed some of your policies, and one, of course, was the mining tax. The other was to toughen up your border security protection, but nothing came out of that press conference but more rhetoric.