Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to echo a number of the sentiments that were there in Senator McAllister's contribution about absolutely the need for women and men to feel safe in the workplace, for there to be no discrimination, bullying, harassment or any other poor behaviour of any sort from people in this place, whether they be ministers of the Crown, whether they be shadow ministers, whether they be members of parliament. So we are on a unity ticket in terms of condemning that kind of behaviour.

In relation to Minister Tudge and Minister Porter, I would refer to the statements that they have issued. The Prime Minister holds the ministerial staff code of conduct and the ministerial code of conduct in the highest regard. He holds it to the highest standards. In fact, it's why the Prime Minister strongly supported the inclusion of a ban on relations between ministers and their staff in 2018, and the Prime Minister continues to uphold that ban. Separately, in 2018, the Prime Minister directed the Liberal Party to review its complaints and disputes resolution processes. This resulted in the Liberal Party's first National Code of Conduct and the Complaints and Dispute Resolution Policy.

I wanted to turn to the other aspect of questioning from those opposite, and that was around quality of spend. This was what the Labor Party decided to devote much of question time to today. The Labor Party—the party of pink batts, the party of cash for clunkers, the party of cheques for dead people, the party of school hall rorts—decided that they wanted to make a point of quality spending. To use as their example, and to show just how out of touch they are, they decided to compare and contrast their wonderful record of spending with things like the Urban Congestion Fund; that was one of the things they were criticising today. The Labor Party are sitting there with their woeful record of managing the budget and managing the economy. They come in here—and we've got Senator Ciccone, a senator for Victoria—and criticise the fact that there were a lot of Urban Congestion Fund projects—