Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst I'm tempted to take Senator Brockman's opportunity to talk about my bush firefighting experience, I fear that it would be self-incriminating if I were to tell that story so I might leave that one for another day. What I do want to talk about is the economy. There was some welcome news that we saw today, which is encouraging. I want to actually go to the substance of the way this government deals with it. What we saw, and we saw it from the press conference from the Treasury and we saw it in this chamber today as well, is how quick they are to get out there and take credit. As soon as they are able to they get out there and take credit. We saw evidence of that from the question from Senator Gallagher today to the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Whilst there's some welcome news, there is still overwhelming evidence about how difficult it is for families out there as they try to recover from the COVID pandemic.

I think you have to look at how the government operates, because at the end of the day this actually goes to the way that they treat Australians and Australian families. We see it today with the economy. We also saw it earlier this year. As we've also highlighted through question time today, we saw it with their response to bushfires. We have also seen it in how they have responded to sports rorts—let alone robodebt, where there's a lack of accountability. There is a lack of answering the questions that we put to them, trying to hold this government to account so that Australian families can understand how they are responding to these challenges.

We also know that they avoid accountability. They go out of their way, whether it's by lodging PII claims, by not answering questions, by failing to front up and actually level with the Australian people. At the end of the day, when you're in government there is a component of that where you have to be up-front with the Australian people, you actually have to be prepared to answer some of those tough challenges. It's from the Prime Minister down. He takes the lead role in this. He's always there ready to announce the good news but never actually to be up-front with the Australian people or say, 'We got this wrong,' like he should have done at the start of the year with the bushfires and like they should have done in response to sports rorts. They should've been up-front with the Australian people and said: 'We've got this wrong. We're going to fix it up. We're going to fund those clubs that missed out.' We have seen it with the bushfires again, a failure—who could not be forced into action after what they saw at the start of this year? We're still seeing it today with those communities that are suffering.

We've also seen it in response to international events. All Australians were relieved when Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released. The foreign minister was all over it. She was all through the media talking about it. Yet this week we've got a massive diplomatic incident with our biggest trading partner and the foreign minister has not fronted the media once. The shadow foreign minister has, has been prepared to get out and talk about Australia's interests in this regard, but the foreign minister has been silent. They were all over the news the other week about Kylie Moore-Gilbert being released, but there's a failure to actually show leadership. The member for Dawson, George Christensen, has done more media about this than the foreign minister. This is our biggest trading partner. This is going to cost jobs. This is going to have a negative impact on the economy and the foreign minister is silent.

This is what we get from this government. When there's some good news, the minister and others will be out there taking credit, but when there's the tough stuff to deal with—whether it's the government's response to bushfires, taking responsibility for what happened with sports rorts or the outrageous behaviour with robodebt—the government is missing in action. Time and again this is what we see from them. We welcome the fact that there is some encouraging news on the economic front, but we know that the reality for Australians and for Australian families is that things are going to be extremely difficult over the next 12 months. We know that early next year this government will withdraw its support for those people who can't afford to be without that support. But that is what this government will do.

They don't make the hard decisions or the tough decisions and level with the Australian people. They don't have a Prime Minister who is prepared to talk in the national interest. For this Prime Minister, there is only one interest, and that's himself. That is all he thinks about. He never thinks about the national interest, he never thinks about what's good for Australians, he only thinks about himself. There is no better example of that than the fact that, when he quarantined, he quarantined with his photographer.