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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) and the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

There is an old saying, but a true saying when it comes to the coalition: the more things change, the more they stay the same. We have had exactly the same rhetoric, the same spin, the same nonsense paraded before this Senate today that we have had for the last two years of dysfunctional, incompetent government from the coalition. Changing the leader made no change. The same rhetoric, the same three-word slogans that the new Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, was saying would disappear all got a run again today in question time. This is a government that is an absolute rabble. This is a government that has got no concept and no understanding of the economic necessities of this country. This is a government that had an opportunity to stand up and say what it would do to move this economy and this society forward, and what did we get? We got the same old spin—same old, same old from the same old tired, incompetent, dysfunctional government that parades around as a so-called government in this country.

We know they are split up the middle. There is another old saying: if you cannot govern yourself, you cannot govern the country. This lot cannot govern themselves—absolutely no chance. You saw the vote last night, tipping out Prime Minister Abbott, who was the great hero of the coalition, the great hero that brought them to government. It was only last week they were standing up there, one after the other, defending the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and running the same three-word slogans that the former Prime Minister ran every day. They cannot change it. It is in the DNA of this government to attack pensioners, to attack those on welfare, to attack working people in this country—that is what the DNA of this lot is.

They have got no understanding of how ordinary families battle every day to put food on their tables, buy their kids' schoolbooks, buy their kids their school uniforms. This is because predominantly they think about privilege when they think about this society. They think about the big end of town. They think about how they are going to cuddle up to Rupert Murdoch in this country, and they have now got a leader who actually comes from that end of town, who is a rich individual with absolutely no idea what it is like to battle in this country. Why else would he have supported every attack on working people in this country that was in that first budget? Why would he support attacking pensioners, attacking the youth of this country who are battling to get a job? Why did he say that he back every aspect of what was the worst budget this country has ever seen? What he says—I do not often agree with Malcolm Turnbull, but he did say that the government had not been successful in providing the economic leadership that we need. You do not provide economic leadership by attacking the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country. Malcolm Turnbull is backing—sorry, the Prime Minister is backing that in, and that is what he is going to continue to do.

We had Senator Cormann here, in the same robotic splurge of argument that we get every day, trying to defend this position, but Senator Cormann, according to the Prime Minister, was a failure in his position, an absolute failure. The best we can do for this country is get rid of this government, not change the leader. (Time expired)