Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear Senator Bushby over there. In your heart, Senator Bushby, I think you really do try to do the right thing by your side of politics. But you sit there and say that John Howard had a mandate when John Howard told an absolute fib. John Howard said, ‘never, ever, ever’ about a GST. John Howard did not pull a rabbit out of a hat and do the right thing and go to the people the next day, which you lot are carrying on about. He waited. He was no different from the Prime Minister. She has said that she wants to talk about it, that she wants to negotiate it, that it will go through to the other house and that it will come through to this chamber. You lot over there will have the opportunity to do what you want to do and to vote against it, and you will carry on with the rhetoric that we have been hearing since you knifed Malcolm Turnbull and elected Mr Abbott—opposing every single thing.

I do not have a lot of time to put my message across, but I would like to put this to the people of Australia. It was with great embarrassment throughout the election campaign that I watched Mr Abbott put himself up as the future alternative Prime Minister. I sat there and thought to myself: ‘What does this man stand for? What are his policies? What do his faithful disciples on the other side of the chamber see in this man? What is he going to do for Australia? What would he do for our kids if he were to win the election and form government?’ All I heard throughout the whole campaign was what Mr Abbott and the Libs and the doormats were not going to do—nothing about what they were going to do.