Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I can assure Senator Cormann that I am not running for the hills. I'm going to be here for the next two minutes and thirty-eight seconds rubbing your nose in the fact that you've got no agenda! The Australian public, for very good reasons in their own minds, decided to bring you back so you can have another crack for your third term. We know that Senator Cormann—

Government senators interjecting—

No, I said for their very good reasons they decided to bring you back for your third term. Go back and look at what I said. What I said is that for their very good reasons—

Senator Cormann interjecting—

Senator Cormann, why don't you spend a little bit of time working out what you actually want to do? You've got nearly three more years to run this parliament, and you've got nothing that you want to do.

I've already talked about wage growth. The bill immediately prior to this motion was about housing. We know that under this government housing affordability is the worst we have seen in decades. How about you introduce some legislation on that so that we can actually debate doing something about that? We've talked about Newstart today. There might be something you can do on Newstart. There might be something you can do to assist all sorts of Australians with all sorts of issues, but you are so bereft of ideas. You'd given up on the Australian public before the last election. You don't know what you want to do.

We are all intrigued about what on earth we're going to be debating for the rest of this week, let alone next week, let alone the remainder of the term. What you clearly need to do is to send a few of your staff away to work out what you are actually going to do for an agenda? You've now got Senator McKenzie out there cooking up legislation on all sorts of things that no-one in regional Australia is talking about. This is the most embarrassing thing I have seen in three years.

Senator Colbeck has just walked in. Perhaps Senator Colbeck might like to do something about the aged care crisis that we're seeing in this country. It was revealed in question time today that the aged care regulator is completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to a nursing home that shut down a bit over a week ago on the Gold Coast. Maybe we should think about strengthening aged care legislation? Maybe we should think about strengthening Medicare? There are any number of issues that this government, if it actually was committed to serving the Australian people, could bring forward legislation for right now, but it is so out of ideas that it has no choice but to get its senators up giving address-in-reply speeches.

I remember that in the previous parliament it took the best part of an entire term to get through the address-in-replies because this government had legislation that it actually wanted to put forward. Maybe that's what you got under Prime Minister Turnbull? Maybe you actually had an agenda under Prime Minister Turnbull? Now you've got Prime Minister Morrison. Senator Cormann didn't want him leading the government, and half the people over there didn't either, and now I can see why—because you actually don't know what he wants to do. He doesn't know what he wants to do. He's the one who is stuck in the Canberra bubble, and is setting up these senators— (Time expired)