George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

In introducing this matter of public importance, I want to begin by addressing the role of the Prime Minister in the many scandals that have beset her government. Of all the obligations of ministerial accountability, the most funda­mental is this: the obligation to conduct the affairs of the government in an honest and decent fashion. We have spoken in the last three or four years in this chamber on many occasions about the remarkable incompet­ence of the Rudd and Gillard governments. It is now almost impossible to find anyone other than a dedicated member of the Australian Labor Party who will disagree with you that the Gillard government is the worst government that Australia has ever suffered. It is not just the worst government since the Whitlam government or the most incompetent government since that famously incompetent government but the worst government that anyone can remember. That has become the brand of the modern Labor Party.

The Labor Party is a political organisation that delivers incompetent governments. It has delivered incompetent governments at the state level which have seen state Labor government after state Labor government hurled from office with enthusiasm by the electors at state elections in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and almost certainly in the year to come in Queensland. There has also been incompetence at the federal level. That is brand Labor. I see Senator Faulkner over there. It is well known that I have a high regard for Senator Faulkner. Senator Faulkner is a former federal president of the Australian Labor Party and a cabinet minister in successive Labor governments. I cannot help but feel sadness for someone like Senator Faulkner seeing the political movement to which he has given his life degenerate into farce and scandal in the way the Gillard government has degenerated into farce and scandal.

I have talked about incompetence, but incompetence is not the worst sin. It is a very, very serious sin, but it is not the worst sin. The worst sin any government can commit is its failure to be honest with the people, its failure to respect the people, its failure—in the words of this MPI—to be accountable to the people. We saw that exhibited chillingly yesterday when that unattractive popinjay Mr Anthony Albanese, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, described—