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

I follow that rather sad and essentially valedictory contribution by Senator Matt Thistlethwaite, one of the proteges of the New South Wales Right of the Labor Party, to which I will return. Throughout the length and breadth of Australia today people have a sense that the government is in crisis, that it is in terminal decline, that it is utterly divided and that the wheels are falling off. This happens to all governments with the passage of time and today it is happening to the government of Julia Gillard. So deep are the divisions within this government that this morning's newspapers carried reports leaked from the Labor Party caucus meeting yesterday that the Prime Minister warned her own troops that their greatest enemy was the enemy within. The greatest enemy of the Labor government is the people within the Labor government, so divided have the government become against themselves. It is a government which has lost its way, which lacks integrity, which entirely lacks a vision for Australia and, indeed, which lacks the elementary competency to govern.

Last Wednesday Ms Gillard inflicted upon the Australian people the very last thing they wanted or needed—that is, a 227-day-long election campaign. This catastrophic error of political judgement was variously described by members of her own Labor caucus—and they were quoted without attribution in the weekend newspapers—as 'pathetic', 'suicidal' and 'bizarre'. Since that day the government has lurched from crisis to crisis. Within 24 hours the de facto Labor member for Dobell, Mr Craig Thomson, had been arrested and charged with 149 counts of fraud. This is the man upon whom the Gillard government relies for its existence. When Ms Gillard was asked at that Press Club address by a journalist: 'Will there be days for governing and days for campaigning?' she said: 'Yes, there will be. Some days will be days for governing and some days will be days for campaigning.' I think Ms Gillard needs to add a third category. There will be days set aside for governing, there will be days set aside for campaigning and there will be days set aside—a lot of days set aside—for court appearances. Because in the coming weeks and months, these are the various Labor party politicians, supporters and affiliates who face serious allegations of fraud now before the courts.

I have mentioned Mr Craig Thomson's 149 counts of fraud. These are on top of the Fair Work Australia proceedings to seek restitution from the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Fair Work Australia found, after inquiry, he had thieved from low-paid workers of the Health Services Union, presently stayed pending the criminal charges. As yet, we have yet to see the outcome of Strike Force Carnarvon; the New South Wales police investigation into other allegations of bribery and secret commissions against Mr Craig Thomson, the member for Dobell, upon whose vote the Gillard government depends. Meanwhile, in the coming week there are the fraud charges against the other man upon whose vote the Gillard government depends, Mr Peter Slipper. Meanwhile, there are the fraud charges against Mr Michael Williamson. Mr Michael Williamson was the federal president of the Australian Labor Party who gave the green light to the installation of Ms Gillard as Prime Minister in a midnight political coup on 23 June 2010, when an elected prime minister—the Hon. Kevin Rudd—was removed by the faceless men. Mr Williamson is not so faceless these days; we see his face in the line-up. On top of all that, there is the ongoing scandals touching the Prime Minister herself concerning the AWU slush fund—not my words, but hers. Who could possibly imagine that a government so corrupted, so mired in sleaze and criminality could possibly conduct the affairs of the nation?

Just when one thought that it could not get any worse for Ms Gillard, on Friday night, again in the dark of night—this government has a propensity to do things in the dark of night—two senior ministers, our colleague Senator Evans and my opposite number—the minister whom I shadow—the Attorney-General, Ms Roxon, resigned suddenly. I can take at face value Senator Evans's explanation of his retirement. He has served in the Senate for 20 years and has led the pack of zombies—Senator Doug Cameron's words, not mine—who sit behind him for eight years. I can believe that Senator Chris Evans might have had enough. I do not believe that of Ms Roxon. As Lady Bracknell may have said: to lose one senior minister is a misfortune, but to lose two seems like carelessness. Well, in fact, worse than carelessness—catastrophe. The Australian public knows that the wheels are falling off this government and so do its members when not only Senator Evans but Ms Roxon and Mr Robert McClelland—her predecessor as Attorney-General—decide there is no point in contesting the next election.

At least they got to go under their own steam. Unlike our colleague, Senator Trish Crossin, who was politically butchered by one of the most brutal acts of political butchery any of us have ever seen, dismissed from her position by prime ministerial fiat because—on the Prime Minister's own admission—the Australian Labor Party had failed to preselect one Indigenous person to sit in the Australian parliament. Some 42 years after my late friend, the great Neville Bonner, first sat in this chamber as a representative of the Queensland Liberal Party, the Australian Labor Party had to butcher one of their own to force the preselection of an Indigenous Australian.

I would not like these dramatic political events—the events suggestive of chaos and terminal decline that we have witnessed in the last few days—to be allowed to obscure or let pass unnoticed an even more significant contribution: the speech on Saturday of the current federal Vice President of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Tony Sheldon, to the Young Labor conference. This is the Labor Party's federal vice president, not a Liberal politician. He said the Labor Party was in a 'catastrophic' situation. Tony Sheldon said:

Our crisis is more than just a crisis of trust brought on by the corrupt behaviour of property scammers and lobbyists. It's a crisis of belief brought on by lack of moral and political purpose.

He said 'there must be no understating the gravity of the crisis here' in New South Wales, 'no blame shifting and no dodging of responsibility to set things right'. And, significantly, although placing the primary blame on the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Tony Sheldon said this is a crisis that affects every state and every faction of the Australian Labor Party.

When your own immediate past federal president stands in the dock of the court facing serious allegations of criminal fraud, and your current federal vice president says your government is—his word, not mine—a catastrophe which represents a party which lacks a moral or political purpose, then that seems to me a description of a government and a political movement in terminal decline. So worried are they about themselves—this endless conversation about the eternal, broiling miasma that is the modern Australian Labor Party—no wonder they cannot deliver on a single promise. No wonder they cannot, in particular, get the budget back into surplus.