Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, 10 minutes is a long time in politics, isn't it, Senator Bernardi? We are debating the point here that in a little while may be academic—because we will know that at four o'clock, won't we, when Mr Turnbull has a media conference, as I understand it. It just shows the old adage still stands.

Of course, the Prime Minister—if in fact he is the Prime Minister in the not-too-distant future—has failed to show leadership in this country. I do not have time to go into all those matters; I will stick mainly to my specific portfolio areas.

The Prime Minister came into being the Prime Minister, saying that he was going to be the Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs. But one of the key constituencies that he has failed are, in fact, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. One of his first moves in his first budget was to cut over half a billion dollars' worth of funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—cutting the heart out of key programs and cutting the heart out of some very important Aboriginal health funding.

Then, of course, he has presided over bringing a whole lot of programs from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander portfolio into Prime Minister and Cabinet, and he has put in place the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. The strategy is so bad that we have had to refer it to a Senate committee inquiry—and the committee is still undertaking that work. We know that many essential services have been cut. Because of the mistakes that were made, the gaps have been identified, and some of those have been filled, but you cannot cut half a billion dollars worth of Aboriginal funding without having very significant impacts on the delivery of services and supports.

Then we had the broken promise to introduce a justice target into Closing the Gap targets. The Prime Minister has presided over a situation in Australia where there are ever-increasing rates of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. He has failed to address that, failed to put in place justice reinvestment and, as I said, failed to put in place a justice target, which could then lead the rest of the country in addressing justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We have not seen any movement on implementing the over 21-year-old recommendations around deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Here we have a government that has been intent on having a go at the most vulnerable in our community. Who can fail to draw the link when there are headlines on the front pages of the tabloids that, yet again, demonise people with disability and those on disability support pensions and then, all of a sudden, on the same day, an announcement by the government on a crackdown on people with disability trying to survive on disability support pensions? I do not think anybody in this country would deny a distinct link between those outrageous headlines and more attacks on people with disabilities.

One of the most egregious attacks was on the young people of this country. The Prime Minister started off his term, in fact, attacking young unemployed people, saying that they were couch-surfing and content to live at home. He followed that up with another outrageous budget cut in which he tried to force young people under the age of 30 to exist on nothing for six months. He redefined the age of young people and tried to make them survive on thin air. He said, 'By the way, while you're surviving on thin air, try to find 40 jobs at the same time.' When that was destined for certain defeat in this very place, the government changed tack and decided that they were only going to deny people income support for four weeks—actually, make that five weeks, because that was on top of the ordinary waiting period. That, fortunately, was also rejected just last week—thank goodness. But, not content, the government say that they are going to bring it back again. Where is the Prime Minister's leadership to say, 'Actually, we got that wrong. We apologise to the youth of Australia. We are going to now support you and not try to demonise you.'

Climate change has to be one of the vast areas of his failed leadership. In fact, his leadership was with climate deniers. He proudly put on a tinfoil hat to tilt at windmills and to have a go at wind turbines, and he supported the comments about how beautiful coalmining is. (Time expired)