Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

This government is starkly out of touch with the community and has no plans for the future. We have a Prime Minister who has no vision and no economic plan whatsoever, but the government does not want to hear about it. The Australian people already know; what I am trying to do is put context into the legislation that is before us. We have these scandals that have been perpetrated by those on that side of the chamber. One of their colleagues, Senator Bernardi—who came into this Senate chamber at the same time as I did, in the 2005 class—obviously has little confidence in this government being able to bring any sort of legislation through this chamber.

But I do not want to be distracted from the issues that are confronting the Australian people and the fact that the government have failed to address the issues that have been raised with them in relation to the robo-debt system, with 170,000 letters and notices having gone out to everyday Australians. They do not want to hear about that, but I am going to continue, because, Madam Deputy President, you very well know that in the past those opposite have spoken many times on pieces of legislation and given context to the government's inability to govern this country. The government's shambolic system has wrongly targeted a 76-year-old Queenslander—