Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator O'Sullivan says, 'What nonsense.' This shows you that these people are just defying reality. They just do not accept reality. It was not the Labor Party who had the vote in your party room and it was not the Labor Party that was rebelling; it was your own backbench that was rebelling, because they are now listening to the Australian public and the Australian public are saying that your budget was unfair, you have not done the right thing and you cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted and that is why you are in the position that you are in, where your party room is falling apart and where your Prime Minister is on a day-to-day probation. If there is another mistake, you are gone and the Malcolm Turnbull minions are in control. That is the problem you have got. You took the schoolkids bonus away, you cut $36 billion out of education and you cut $80 billion out of health—no wonder the Australian public look at you guys askance.

It is not only the Australian public. You have got the Council on Foreign Relations, who promote themselves as supporting globalisation, free trade, reducing financial regulation on transnational corporations and economic consolidation into regional blocks—on it goes. It is a right-wing organisation. What does one of their experts say in the Council of Foreign Relations' journal? They say:

Is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialized democracy?

I can answer that question very easily: yes. They say:

There are world leaders who appear dangerously unhinged, making policy based on whims, advice from a tiny handful of advisers, or some other highly unscientific formula.

They name a few of those leaders, such as Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin. They say:

But none of these leaders run a rich and powerful democracy… Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed.

That was thanks to the Labor Party.

Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him. They should: Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.

That is only the start of the analysis from the right-wing think tank. The coalition are in political trouble and economic trouble. They will not survive because they are unfair and untrustworthy and have lied their way into power. (Time expired)