Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister has invited us to make a couple of observations. He, in fact, referred to me being on the speakers list for the address-in-reply, and he's quite right—I am more than happy to pursue that matter at whatever point the government chooses. But on this matter—and I'm sure the government will be delighted to hear what I've got to say—it needs to be appreciated that the motion that we have before the chamber is to actually deal with the fundamental problem that the Leader of the Opposition has put before us—that this is a government that's run out of steam. It's run out of steam already.

So the minister invited us to look at the Notice Paper, which I have done. On pages 4 and 5, it lists the government business. And what does that tell us? The government has no business! The point is that items listed here in orders of the day we've dealt with, and most of those were essentially non-controversial bills. Why is that the case? It is because the government never anticipated that it, in fact, would be in government. So what has it done to develop a forward program? Nothing. What it sought to do, in bringing these parliamentary sitting periods forward, was to essentially bring forward a number of pieces of legislation aimed at wedging the Labor Party.

Look at the agenda that the government now claims to be its main nation-building program—smash the trade unions, seek to smash the infrastructure fund on some alleged commitment to farming, having already had a commitment from the Labor Party that we would spend the equivalent amount of money from a properly funded source in support for drought relief. When in doubt, wrap yourself in the flag. That's the constant refrain with this mob over there, because they've got nothing else to say. This is a government that was elected on a lie. This is a government that's fundamentally illegitimate. I'll ask a simple question.

This is a Prime Minister that secured one more seat than his predecessor. His predecessor was a dud and a dunce and a dope who had to go because of his result. This Prime Minister gets one more seat: 'Oh, he's an expert. He's a genius. He's there forever.' This is a new framework, of course, aided and abetted by a highly sympathetic News Ltd that, of course, won the election. It was News Ltd that won the election, not this government, because you had nothing to say to the Australian people about the future of this country. All you had to say was that you were opposed to the Labor Party.

And, of course, you've won the unwinnable election, you said. And so what do you do when you come back into this building? You've got nothing to say, so you have to come forward with a series of wedge measures aimed at dividing, aimed at ultra-ultra-partisanship while at the same time getting the violin out, claiming, of course, that this is the new era in which we all seek to be one big, happy family.