Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am talking on the matter of public importance: 'the ongoing failure to show leadership'. Some examples have been given already from a number of commentators. The government has already said that Niki Savva is never welcome to another dinner or fundraiser, that there's something fundamentally wrong when she's contradicting the Prime Minister. Of course, the Prime Minister, on the other hand, is saying, 'Listen; I now listen.' Well, Niki is one of yours, and you aren't listening. Here's another one of yours—John Hewson. John Hewson wrote an op-ed on 2 January. He said:

You were elected to lead, Scott Morrison. It was a surprise, and great that you won against the polling, and that your marketing slogans cut through…

I'd say they'd probably give that a tick, wouldn't they? That's nailing it for the government. He goes on to say:

But they were only slogans. There was no detail.

He went on to say:

You are expected to govern in the national interest … prepare our nation to deal effectively with challenges before they become crises.

He had more to say:

Nobody expects you to "hold a hose" against the fires, but they do reasonably expect you to lead with an immediate response to them and to implement a genuine longer-term strategy to deal with what will be an increasing challenge into the future.

The former Liberal Party Leader of the Opposition went on to say a bit more:

Also you have not shown the leadership expected to make us more drought resistant … Slogans mask a shallowness of leadership skills and strategic thinking. Neither Donald Trump nor Boris Johnson should be your role model. Remember Malcolm Turnbull failed to deliver the "better government" that he promised on seizing the leadership.

In actual fact, it's not what Labor's saying; it's what the community's saying. There are some simple, critical things. It's what the Liberal Party members are saying—senior activists and some of those quiet Australians that were referred to before. I'm not sure whether Nikki Savva and the ex-leader are unquiet Australians whom we should disregard because they have previously been activists in the Liberal Party, but they have got one very important thing going for them, and that is that they are prepared not to be quiet and they're prepared to speak out. There were some quiet Australians referred to in a report in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in February this year, which quoted an Ipsos research paper that 'also revealed majority support for greater action on climate change'. It said:

Some participants see Scott Morrison as irretrievably damaged by the bushfire crisis and thought this was particularly likely to be the case for voters in areas that were fire-affected.

We aren't raising these issues to score points; we're raising these issues for the Prime Minister to listen to and take into account what the quiet Australians are saying—what your own are saying.

Then we start looking at the issues in the economy. We have a crisis in our economy. Wages growth is slowing to a few points from inflation. Rather than getting out of the way and letting unions, the main forces who would drive an increase in wages, do their work—an increase in wages is something that the Reserve Bank and economists want to happen—the government are hell-bent on standing in the way of this. What they do is come up with ideas like the trade union royal commission and the ensuring integrity bill—God, ensuring integrity! I think 'ensuring integrity' was recently described by another journalist, Michael Pascoe. He said:

Let's be very clear about this. The rorting of the $100 million community sports grants program was flagrant corruption and Prime Minister Morrison and senior ministers were in it up to their ethically-devoid eyeballs.

The attempts to turn around and make sure that real policies make real differences for real people are about starting to deal with the issues with wages being so low. They are about giving an opportunity for unions, workers and other people to collectively stand up and fight for better wages and conditions. It's about the Prime Minister not trumpeting the unemployment rate when the unemployment rate is doubled by underemployment. Underemployment in regional areas and throughout Australia is at a critical level. (Time expired)