Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You weren't there, Senator; I was. Three people spoke to him in 30 minutes. In fact, one of them turned around and abused him as she walked away. She wasn't impressed with Mr Shorten. While Mr Turnbull was walking with us through the streets of Ulverstone, taking selfies and welcoming people outside their stores, Mr Shorten was sitting on his own outside Banjo's in the mall in Devonport. Nobody wanted to talk to him. The business community in Devonport spoke with their feet—in fact, with their wallets.

When the Devonport Chamber of Commerce invited businesses to come and speak to Mr Shorten—with three weeks notice of when Mr Shorten was coming to Devonport for a business lunch—15 people signed up. The Devonport Chamber of Commerce even warned the Labor Party a week and a half out that they had only 15 people who wanted to come and see him. They did nothing about it. The function was downgraded to the downstairs unit as a working lunch over sandwiches. The Labor Party, obviously, did a bit of a ring around the night before and they got it back to 30, which was the benchmark to move back upstairs into the restaurant.

A similar event for the Prime Minister was sold out in 24 hours. People came in to speak to the Prime Minister to understand our policies.

Senator Chisholm interjecting—

What happened at the by-election? Effectively a zero swing. It's a very different circumstance to Queensland. But I can tell you there is no interest in Mr Shorten, and that's because he no longer believes the things he said in government. He will not repeat the statements that he made in government.

He used to believe in tax cuts for business. He doesn't now. He used to believe in a whole range of things that would benefit the Australian economy, but now, for purely crass political purposes, he just walks away from that. He has sold out. He doesn't believe in workers, he doesn't believe in growth of the economy and he doesn't believe in the things that will make a difference. All he's interested in is cheap, nasty political pointscoring. That's all he's interested in. He's like Senator Watt. That's all he's interested in doing—nothing constructive, just cheap, nasty political pointscoring, like Senator Watt. Unfortunately, Senator Watt gets a bit tetchy about these things but that's the life of this place. We have a record of delivering for the Australian people, much unlike the ALP.