Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He is a jelly-back indeed, Senator Cameron—one of your more colourful phrases and well used in this context when we're trying to describe this lily-livered, jelly-back Prime Minister.

This isn't something that's just happening here in the bubble of Canberra, though. The disunity of the Turnbull government is having a real and tangible impact on the lives of Australian men and women. Instead of being here at work debating 53 bills before the lower house, including legislation on a response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Prime Minister decided not to show up this week, because he is scared of what's going on behind him. He knows that he knifed a first-term sitting prime minister and he knows they're all lining up behind him as he's falling over as we speak. The actions of Mr Turnbull are a clear reflection of the arrogance, of the born-to-rule attitude that we see from this government. What kind of message does this cancelling of parliament send to young children? If you're uncertain, you just run and hide.

This cancelling of the House of Representatives is just one revelation of the state of disunity that so disables this dysfunctional government. It seems like every day we have a new report of a different flavour of disunity. It is like a menu; you can choose your flavour every day of the week. It's the disunity of an MP telling the media he or she is threatening to quit the coalition unless Malcolm Turnbull makes a change or is dumped. Or it's the disunity of the same MP talking to the Australian Conservatives about whether he might jump ship to join Mr Bernardi's party. We know what that sort of discussion does to a government. Or it's the other flavours of disunity: cabinet leaks. There is not just one; you can have that in two flavours. There is the disunity of MPs and senators coming forward, no longer anonymously, actually talking on the public record about how terrible Malcolm Turnbull is as a leader. Just today George Christensen said that Mr Turnbull is having a hands-off approach and is not a true leader. If you've got somebody on your own side describing you as that, you're in big, big trouble.

Mr Turnbull is not fit to govern, and his incapacity is seen by those who are closest to him: those who are sharing the government benches here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. They know him. They're saying he's not a leader. They're saying he's unfit. They're divided and they are showing all the signs of disunity, of a dysfunctional government, because Malcolm Turnbull is an unfit man to be the Prime Minister. (Time expired)