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

That was embarrassing. As the underlings come into the chamber to ingratiate themselves with the new Prime Minister, there is a claim that the new Prime Minister is from South Australia. I thought she was from Victoria. She is sounding like Phar Lap! Her skeleton is in South Australia, her skin is Victoria, but I can tell you where her heart is: it is in New South Wales, and it is owned by the New South Wales right. That is our new Prime Minister. It is shameless. That was a shameless speech and it has been shameless since last night.

We had to endure it last night on Sky television, riveting as it was! The factional warlords—the Mr Bill Shortens and the Senator Feeneys of this world—were falling over each other last night to be the one to be seen to be stabbing the knife in the heart of the former Prime Minister. They all wanted it out there. They were texting to Sky television at a rapid pace—twice that that the Liberals ever did during their leadership challenge, I can assure you—saying, ‘I’m the one who is stabbing him. I’m part of Bill Shorten’s faction’ and, ‘No, I’m from Senator Feeney’s faction; I’m the one stabbing him.’ It was humiliating to see them falling over each other, one by one, to be seen to be stabbing the former Prime Minister and seeing him off.

I will tell you why it was embarrassing, let alone being utterly disrespectful to the office of the Prime Minister. That is no way to treat a Prime Minister, even Mr Kevin Rudd. This is the mob—all of the underlings and the frontbench—who spent 2½ years of Mr Rudd’s prime ministership cowering to him. And within 24 hours they were falling over each to knife him. And within fewer than 24 hours they are all walking in and attempting to ingratiate themselves with the new Prime Minister. What a weak bunch. For 2½ years you allowed the government to introduce absurd policies like the pink batts and the mining tax. You never knew about them until you read about them. You spent 2½ years cowering to the gang of four and now you are cowering to the new Prime Minister.

I will tell you who takes the prize: Senator Lundy. She is the only one who would dare go on Sky television during this momentous occasion and ingratiate herself to the new Prime Minister. When it was all said and done, when the factions had done their job and done their business, Senator Lundy said, ‘Now is the time for me to move; now is the time for me to ingratiate myself with the new Prime Minister.’ She went on Sky television—and it was literally dripping. She is hanging out for a resurgence of her career, for a promotion, as they all are.

The person who really gets under my skin is the head of the AWU, Paul Howes, who was on television tonight. I know it would get under your skin, Mr President, only too well. I have been here a long time with you and I know that type of person gets under your skin for sure. Do you know what Mr Paul Howes said on television tonight, and do you think the Australian people do not notice these things? He said, ‘There’s only one reason why we dumped the Prime Minister.’ This was on national television, on popular news service Channel 7. It was not stuck away on Lateline on the ABC at 10.30 pm. This was right upfront in prime time. He said, ‘We dumped him because we did our internal polling and it showed he couldn’t win.’

It was just sheer politics. It was nothing to do with the bad policy, and the union Mr Howes represents, which is the mining union, he could not care less about. It meant nothing to him that that mining tax was going to lose jobs for his workers. Only a couple of weeks ago, he was down at the Press Club defending it and defending the former Prime Minister. He was all over Kevin Rudd and all over the mining tax and how good it was. He was defending it with all of the absurd arguments that the government are still defending it with. Mr Paul Howes has political ambition dripping all over him, and he did the swap late last night also. He wants to come into parliament; there is absolutely no doubt about that. He has a neon light on him, saying, ‘I’m ambitious; don’t trust me’. The whole lot of them were disgraceful last night.

Tonight we have had Senator Farrell. I know him very well and he is quite a decent contributor to this parliament, so I do not know why he reduced himself tonight in the adjournment debate. I guess they are all doing that. You may have her skeleton, Senator Farrell, in South Australia; we may have her skin in Victoria, but the New South Wales right has her heart. We have one here in the chamber actually, looking all starry-eyed at me as if I am not telling the truth and the facts. Senator Stephens used to be president of the party in New South Wales, and she knows only too well that last night, when the votes of the New South Wales unions and members of parliament switched, that it was ‘Good night, Nurse’ for the former Prime Minister.

This is the bewilderment of politics, and books will be written about it, but you have to ask yourself a question, and I wonder if you were asking yourself last night. The former Prime Minister just eight months ago was the most popular Prime Minister in Australia ever, more popular than Bob Hawke himself. That was as amazing to us as it was amazing to you, as we all knew him, but there was a reason for it. It was because the Australian people trusted him. They trusted that the policies that he and the rest of the government were spinning were the right ones.

The Australian people did not fall out of love with Kevin Rudd—or his personality, as Paul Howes will have it. They fell out of love with the spin on bad policy. They fell out of love with bad policy and they could not stomach the Prime Minister and the rest of the government continually spinning bad policy. Eight months ago, when they thought the policy may have been right, before it was proven wrong by a tougher and stronger opposition leader, the people gave him the benefit of the doubt and they liked Kevin Rudd. It was the policy. It was the policy, Stupid!

Yet the great disappointment was this new Prime Minister. I watched the first media conference. I was bewildered and surprised but, to my delight, she did not take the opportunity in her first media conference, where she had all the authority and chance to do so, to set the direction of the government. She stuck to the old policies. All she could come up with was rhetoric—‘My door is open in regard to the mining tax.’ She repeated the phrase ‘hardworking Australians’ over and over again. It is just another version of Mr Rudd’s ‘working families’. It was all rhetoric. It was well done. It was very disciplined. It was very good. But do you really think the Australian people are going to fall for it?

I congratulate her for being the first female Prime Minister in Australia. I think the Australian people will like that too. But they want the policies changed. If Kevin Rudd had done the right thing with the policies, he would still be Prime Minister today and he would still have a 70 per cent popularity rating. They fell out with the policies and they got sick of the way the government were trying to spin bad policies.

We have a new Prime Minister who has changed nothing on her first day. She will string the media along. They will be in love with many aspects of this political operator. She will spin them on, and the Labor government will spin that there are policy changes in the wind. But there are not. If you do not do it on the first day, at your first press conference or your first appearance in the parliament, you are not going to. Certainly they are not going to be of any not substance and certainly not what the Australian people are looking for. It was a lost opportunity. It was much to my bewilderment and, I must say, much to my delight. I thought: ‘Is that it? Is that what they spent all last night doing? Did they not calculate what was really needed to lift themselves in the polls, if that is all that drives them, let alone what was needed for good governance and good government?’ The Australian people will reject them again unless they start doing something about their policies. They should dump the mining tax and toughen border security.

But why would I expect them to be discerning about whom they would make the new Prime Minister? The badge of dishonour of this Prime Minister cannot be taken off her. It has been firmly placed on her lapel—that is, she as a minister oversaw the most rorted, wasteful scheme in Australian political history, with losses of billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. That is the Prime Minister they have put in place, and that is the Prime Minister who will not change the current policies at all. She will spin them and she will mould them a little bit, but she is not going to change them. Do not think for a second the Australian people will fall for it. (Time expired)