Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

There are only a few minutes left of the discussion of this matter of public importance, but it is an important discussion. What Senator Whish-Wilson has just alluded to is probably going to make this a day to remember. What looks now like the imminent election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States really scares me. If there was ever a time when a country like ours needed a strong agenda with a strong leadership, we are going to need it now, and we are going to need it over the next few years. Unfortunately, that is what is seriously lacking with this government. They have no idea where they want to go—no idea where they want us to be as a country. They seem to have no vision.

We have seen that the Prime Minister was once a strong leader in terms of things that are so important, like addressing climate change, and like setting this country up with the economic capacity to address those issues and take us forward to be a world leader in those things. But those things are just not there. We have vacated that space because of the conservatives that are driving this agenda-less government. And I know that sounds like a little bit of a contradiction, that they are driving a government with no agenda, but that is what they are doing. They are driving a government that wants to put the rights of racists as the No. 1 agenda item of this country—something that has been previously ruled out by the Prime Minister but now has been resurrected as the agenda of the day—the agenda of the week. And here we go: the Prime Minister believes that the agenda—again driven by the conservatives—ought to be about abrogating our responsibility as a parliament to make decisions about the Marriage Act. He wants to push that off to a plebiscite. That is the sort of vacuous agenda that this government seems to have, which is being driven by the conservative wing of the Liberal Party. It is just not going to cut it. It is not going to cut it in an environment where there is going to be economic instability as a result of today. The global economy is going to react to the imminent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. We need a government that actually knows where they want to take us, that has a vision for us—and this government does not. We have a pathetic Prime Minister who is just letting this country drift, driven by the George Christensens and the Eric Abetzes of the world. That will not cut it any longer.