Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Five ministers is my understanding. One of them was actually the Hon. Scott Morrison. This is an area where there's no debate; this is bipartisan policy. The ministers have been the Hon. Kevin Andrews, the Hon. Scott Morrison, the Hon. Christian Porter, the Hon. Dan Tehan and the Hon. Paul Fletcher, who is current. That's in a short space of time: 2013 to now. How is it possible that the electorate is getting the government that it needs when there's been this inordinate amount of change? It is akin to musical chairs. Who you support as Prime Minister, in some respects, means that you become a minister.

Clearly, in the case of the Hon. Dan Tehan—who's been in three portfolios in nine months, and in seven portfolios in two years and seven months—he has barely had time to get his head around the various jobs he has been asked to undertake. That's not good public policy. That doesn't engender good outcomes in government. I have the greatest respect for the Hon. Dan Tehan. I think he did some excellent work in the veterans' affairs area. But he's no longer in veterans' affairs; he's in there trying to fix up the problems created by the Hon. Simon Birmingham in education.

If you look at COAG again, you'll see that the Hon. Simon Birmingham left putting out the debate and the contested different positions in education, and that the Hon. Scott Morrison has had to put in place someone who's mother, I think, was actually the education minister in Victoria. He'll give it a go, but he's starting behind the eight ball because a lack of continuity in the Prime Ministerial position has meant an inordinate amount of loss of continuity in the subsidiary positions. And that is right down to our ordinary old Senate process here. Us backbenchers, we love our Senate process!

The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee had a very vital inquiry which couldn't become quorate because our chair and deputy chair, the Hon. Linda Reynolds and the Hon. David Fawcett, had been promoted. So it doesn't just stop at the ministerial level; it flows right down to the work of the entire parliament. There we were in Brisbane and Townsville with veterans who had very widely-held and deeply-felt contested positions. They wanted resolution, they wanted fairness out of their government and they wanted their hearing dates to be honoured and for them to be able to contribute, and we couldn't even do that! The division, the dysfunction and the instability is absolutely catastrophic in all facets.

I dare to say that there are ministers on the other side who haven't got their charter letters yet. I dare to say that there are people who haven't had their charter letters. In other words, their responsibilities and their duties are not clearly defined, so they're still getting briefings about what they might possibly be looking after. How on earth is it possible that that can look like good government? How on earth is that possible? We know from the estimates process, as I mentioned in taking note, that the Hon. Christopher Pyne and the Hon. Marise Payne appeared to be having quite a contest between each other about what was going to be in those charter letters and about the areas of responsibility they were going to take respectively, because it was quite some time after their ministerial appointment that the charter letters were actually confirmed to have been delivered.

You have a situation where dysfunction, division and instability are endemic in the coalition. I don't think you can actually characterise it any other way. It has been a guerrilla war conducted by the Hon. Tony Abbott. It was a nuclear option conducted by the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull: 'Show me the 43 people who are against me. I want to see their names. I want them recorded in Liberal Party history. Show me the 43 names.' That has never been heard of before. A leader would normally call a party room meeting on a number of names. He wanted 43; he wanted the majority of those people against him to sign their names. It was really interesting to read what some people signed on it. They signed the petition but said, 'I support the Prime Minister.' My goodness!

It's obvious that people played both sides of the fence. There is one person in the chamber, the Hon. Mathias Cormann, who backed three people in three days! He was on three different potential prime ministers' sides in three days. If you want a better example of what division, instability and lack of governing for the Australian people looks like, when you see them up there on the back bench—don't worry; they were only there for six hours. He then came into the chamber and said: 'We want a more powerful economy. We want more employment.' I'm sure he does, but he's not doing a very good job of delivering it because the division, the instability and the lack of good governance has catastrophic outcomes for the electorate. The concerns of those 173 kids in aged-care facilities should be addressed. They should be out of there, and COAG should be meeting to do it.