Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Hansard source

Basically, we have a Prime Minister who is willing to lie on the floor, roll over and be the doormat to the right wing of his party as long as it saves his prime ministership. Last month, Mr Turnbull said this about the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten:

This is a leader who has no authority within his own party, he has no credibility, he can't keep the same policy position for a week.

How far from the truth can this Prime Minister be? 'Speak for yourself, Mr Turnbull,' I say. Today we've seen your fifth energy policy in five years and your second policy reset within as little as four days. You are in fact all over the shop. How long will today's policy stand? That depends on the media and whether or not Mr Turnbull changes his mind yet again. The fact is that the Prime Minister is digging an even deeper hole for himself. He called a press conference in which he declared himself 'a hostage of a group of wreckers from the Liberal Party's conservative wing'. The Prime Minister himself has acknowledged that he is a hostage of the right wing of his caucus. This isn't something that those in the opposition are saying or that's happening within the media; the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged that fact.

This is a man who stands for nothing. He promised so much when he went to the people. People in the community thought Malcolm Turnbull was going to stand up for climate change, that he was going to deliver a stable government, that he was going to be the Prime Minister of an adult government. Well, there's nothing further from the truth. On climate change he has caved in to the sceptics within his party. We're seeing now that the former Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, determined the policy at the very top of government, and this doesn't make a good government. Prime Minister Turnbull isn't leading the party room. The right wing of his caucus are playing him like a puppet. Frankly, it's sad to see. No advanced democracy should have to be witness to such incompetence. With all of his backflips, perhaps Mr Turnbull can get a job with the circus after he's turfed out. He's Tony Abbott's performing seal. That's the reality of this government at the moment.