Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

One of the many things you learn as a member of parliament, or even working in this building, is to sniff the air. You can feel the tempo in here. I don't think there's anyone working in this chamber at the moment who doesn't feel this government has lost control—total chaos. We've now got the Governor-General's address-in-reply speeches on the parliamentary schedule—on the Dynamic Red. You know they're scraping the bottom of the barrel when they have to bring up the in-reply speeches to the Governor-General's speech, which was delivered nearly two and a half years ago. We've seen the Liberals come in here and filibuster the most obscure bills during the Committee of the Whole stages. Senator Macdonald has been on his feet for nearly half the time we've been in the chamber this week—break the glass and roll out Senator Macdonald if you want a good filibuster. We've seen it. And what did we see this morning? We saw a piece of legislation written for Senator Leyonhjelm, and a minister who couldn't answer the most basic questions. This government has lost control, but I don't want anybody listening to this debate to think it can be seen just in the small things.

Stretch your mind back to only a week ago. We have a government whose numbers are so tight in the House—they are teetering on the edge of a no-confidence motion—that they had to send a junior minister to one of the most important meetings of the International Whaling Commission in 30 years. They couldn't send the environment minister, they couldn't send the Prime Minister and they couldn't even send the foreign minister. They couldn't afford to let anyone go, because their numbers are so tight in this place that they are hanging onto control by the tips of their fingernails.

The week before that we saw a meeting of the Pacific Island leaders putting out videos, one of which I shared on my Facebook page, slamming the Australian government for their lack of action on emissions and on an electricity sector policy to meet our Paris targets. Yesterday, we heard the chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which was recently awarded half a billion dollars of public money, say to a Senate committee that he believed that not only is the Great Barrier Reef in danger from rising emissions but indeed the world's coral reefs are all in danger from rising emissions. This is from a guy who was the CEO of Esso, or ExxonMobil, 30 years ago. He was telling the Senate that all our world's reefs are now in danger on the same day that our new energy minister in that other place was telling the Australian parliament that they have no policy for renewable energy beyond 2020. There is no Renewable Energy Target and no policy for renewables at a time when we most desperately need to reduce emissions.

This is a government that has a by-election looming in the seat of Wentworth. This is a government and a political party that is wracked by internal divisions following the second knifing of a Prime Minister in the last four years. If you want to see how divided this political party is, just have a look at the last votes when Mr Scott Morrison became Prime Minister elect by his own party. Not only did he fail to take more votes off Mr Peter Dutton than Mr Malcolm Turnbull did but he actually lost five votes to Mr Peter Dutton. That's how serious the situation is in the Liberal Party. I've seen it, and it goes back to that first comment about the tempo; even today's flaccid attempt to stand in here and mount some kind of resistance on their government doing a good job—