Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and the Public Service (Senator Cormann) and the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I really think Australians deserve better than this government. When the government becomes an absolute national laughing-stock, it's about time that it goes to an election and gives the people of Australia a choice—a choice between the current government and stability under a Labor government that is actually developing the policies that are important to Australians: policies on health, policies on education, policies on housing, policies on homelessness and policies that benefit working people in this country.

This is a laughing-stock of a government—a government that has gone through a number of so-called economic policies. It started off with an austerity budget that would have meant pensioners in this country would have been $80 a week worse off over a decade. It wanted young people in this country to have access to not one cent of government support for a period of six months. It cut family tax benefit A. It cut family tax benefit B. It just took a wrecking ball to the basis of decency in this country, and after five years it has now been relegated to an absolute laughing-stock.

We have a Prime Minister with no agenda on the environment, who backflips on what he says constantly and who the media are now describing as a fake. This is a government in absolute disarray. This is a government that is divided. It's self-obsessed. It's completely out of touch. Its own members concede that the government is falling apart. Now the latest defector from this rabble of a government, the member for Chisholm, Julia Banks, who was subject to bullying and intimidation by her colleagues in the Liberal Party, says that there were Liberals 'trading their vote for a leadership change in exchange for their individual promotion, preselection endorsements or silence'. What has it come to when the government of the country is simply being driven by ideologues on the other side who are only about their own individual promotion or preselection endorsement?

This is a government that just does not meet the definition of government, because its members can't govern themselves, and when you can't govern yourself you can't govern the country. When you become a laughing-stock, as this rabble of a government has become, confidence declines. We have had a situation where we have not been in a position to reduce electricity prices in this country, because that would require some certainty in terms of policy from the government. We see this mob going from one policy to another, and it's being driven by the extremists in the coalition. It's being driven by the climate change deniers. It's being driven by the ideologues who only think about themselves and don't think about what's right and proper for this country. They are too busy carving each other up and knifing each other in the back. We learnt our lesson on these issues, and I would have thought any sensible government would have learnt their lesson. For Prime Minister Morrison to compare himself with the newly re-elected Premier in Victoria is just a joke. He is not anywhere near the capacity and the position— (Time expired)