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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers to all questions asked by the opposition.

It is no wonder that the Australian public have lost all confidence and all trust in this rabble of a government sitting across here. This is a government that has absolutely no idea about the issues that affect ordinary people. Nothing could have been clearer in the strident response from the Minister for Human Services, Senator Payne, to a legitimate question about how we look after some of the poorest and the most underprivileged people in this country. Senator Payne had an opportunity for two minutes to say that she cares about what happens to people who are unemployed or who rely on a pension, and people who are being ripped off by unscrupulous companies. But what did she do? She spent about one minute and 20 seconds of that response not caring about what is happening to the poor and not caring about what is happening to people who are being exploited. All she did was to try to score political points. The public are over these political points. The public want governments that care about communities. The public want governments that care about jobs, that want to do something about jobs, that want to get kids into apprenticeships, that want to get kids off the dole but do not want to push them in for six months with absolutely no income and force them to rely on charities. Being strident and being uninformed—like Senator Payne was today—is not a good example of how a government should work. You cannot just care about political points. You have got to care about the Australian public.

When people go to the ballot box in New South Wales on Saturday they can look at the quality of the senators, the ministers and the MPs in New South Wales. And Senator Payne epitomises this uncaring approach from this government. They only want to look after the big end of town. They only want to look after their mates who will pull up in their Bentley and hand over the brown paper bag for their election funds. That is the people that they want to look after. They do not care. They do not care about the workers in Penrith, they do not care about the people in Blacktown, they do not care about the people in Mt Druitt. All they care about is the big end of town. Let me tell you, Mike Baird is no different. He wears the same blue tie, he belongs to the same party and he takes the same political position—that is, they do not care about those who are in trouble.

Nothing could epitomise this more than the response of the federal coalition and the New South Wales Liberal government to the bushfires in the Blue Mountains. When you hear Senator Payne stand up saying that things are under consideration, remember she told the people in the Blue Mountains—those who had been moved out from getting any support from the federal government—that that would be 'under active consideration'. These are people who could not get into their homes, people who could not get out of their homes, people who had lost their fridges, people who had lost their food. People who had to go into hotels were told, 'You are on your own.' But what they actually did was tell the people in the Blue Mountains that the issue of providing support was 'under active consideration'. So when you hear the Liberals talk about 'under consideration' and 'under active consideration', you know that this is another way of not delivering for people in New South Wales. We have got two MPs up in the Blue Mountains: we had Mrs Louise Markus, the member for Macquarie, who was absolutely silent. She is one of the worst members of parliament ever in this country. And there is Mrs Roza Sage, the state member, who is absolutely pathetic. She did not raise her voice against Blue Mountains people getting their wages and their entitlements cut.