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

I, too, rise to take note of Senator Cormann's answer to questions from Senator Kitching and Senator Watt. I listened very carefully to the answer, and I listened carefully to some of the media commentary and to Senator Cormann's words on this. He said that the executive had a meeting. The ministry had a meeting. Then they instructed the whips to get the members of the Liberal Party together for a meeting to consider the proposal. Once again, it was top down. It was driven at the executive level, the leadership level, and then it spread to the ministry. Then the whips were instructed to gather the troops together.

It was an unscheduled meeting—clearly, there are party room meetings on a regular basis during sitting weeks—to deal with what? We know that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Go back to the Hon. Tony Abbott, who was replaced under invidious circumstances by the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull. The Hon. Tony Abbott set about undermining the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull—until he'd had enough of it. The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull used existing rules, and he introduced his own rule. He said: 'Unless I see 43 signatures, there'll be no spill.' I think the Liberal Party rules at that stage were that a reasonable number of backbenchers and/or members of the Liberal Party could instigate a spill, but the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull introduced a new rule, which was '43 signatures or I'm gone'. Then we saw the inability of some people to get to the count of 43, and we saw Prime Minister Morrison replace the candidate the Hon. Peter Dutton.

In the electorate, this is probably the question that I get wherever I go: what happened to Malcolm Turnbull; why did he have to go? No-one's clearly and concisely explained that, other than in very procedural terms. They say, 'It's a gift of the coalition party room or the Liberal party room,' and, 'You need to command the support of your fellow members of parliament.' That's all true, but the people who thought—quite wrongly, really, because they probably didn't live in Wentworth—that they'd voted for the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull are not satisfied with that. If you listen carefully to the federal MPs in the Victorian election, when they handed out in their various state electorates, they were met with chilling, deathly silence and cold stares. The Liberal Party have repeated every mistake and added a few to the book of mistakes of the last 10 years. They've added a few and invented a few of their own, and they're going down an inexorable path of decimation.

It doesn't actually apply to Prime Minister Morrison. It would only apply if he gets elected whenever he calls the next election, so you think: 'Why would he choose to call an urgent meeting a couple of days prior to the end of the sitting year? Maybe he's decided to have an election on 27 January? Maybe he's not going to come back for his budget? Maybe things are going to get so bad that he might just pull the pin and say, "Look, we're going to an election"?' If there is an election, at least he can campaign and say, 'If you elect me as Prime Minister, I guarantee I'll be there for the whole term because of this three-quarter rule.' It appears to be, once again—like most of the things they have done—policy on the run meant to appease someone somewhere. It's not evident to the electorate, and it's probably not going to be rewarded by the electorate.

I don't think this rule is going to have a chance to be enacted or to be of any use to the Liberal Party for at least three years, if not six years or nine years. I think the size of their impending electoral disaster is such that the rule will just simply dissolve into nothing, because it is unlikely they'll need it in the 46th parliament, and it's very unlikely, in my view, they'll need it in the 47th parliament because they won't be in government the way they're going. They've changed their Prime Ministers like some people change their shirts. They're putting these rules in very late in the piece—in the last couple of days. The rules won't help you, and they appear to be impenetrable. No-one can really understand what the Liberal Party are doing, and there'll be no good coming out of this rule change.