Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) and the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Senators Gallagher and Brown today relating to the JobKeeper scheme.

I always learn something from listening to Senators Farrell and Abetz. I learnt a lot then about Adelaide Football Club culture. I learnt from Senator Abetz two things: firstly, he doesn't take public accountability very seriously; and, secondly, I suspect the length of his remarks had something to do with being anxious to avoid having to participate in a vote in a debate on Senator Hanson's motion, which is apparently to be dealt with later on this afternoon. Call me cynical, but I think that may have been it.

I listened with some interest. It was hard to hear Senator Gallagher's question, but I could hear the interjections when Senator Gallagher asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate questions about the poor economic performance of this government. What you could hear from the backbench, when she asked questions about the poor performance of the government during this Morrison recession, was people yelling out, 'Ask Dan Andrews!' and, 'Open the borders'. The refrain that rose to a crescendo in the lead-up to the Queensland election and then went faintly quiet—they stopped—is now starting to surge back up again as the mantra on the coalition side.

The truth is: it's the premiers in Australia who have kept Australians safe. It is true that around the country mistakes have been made from time to time. But the premiers and the states have actually stepped up, taken responsibility and done the hard things. There is no economic recovery without a public health program that the country can have confidence in. There is no economic recovery in the absence of dealing effectively with the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no recovery without public confidence.

The Prime Minister's approach to the pandemic and the economy has been a complete contrast. Like with the bushfires, he is nowhere to be seen when the tough decisions need to be made, when other people are doing the work. He only ever turns up for good news—usually the result of the work of others. He's all announcement and no delivery. If it were left to the characters on the back bench, Australia's performance in the COVID-19 pandemic would look much more like Florida or Alabama, our cities' public health performance would look much more like Glasgow's and Sheffield's and our economy—now weak, weak to start with and weakened already—would be a catastrophe. I heard one of the other ministers saying, 'The economic recovery is well underway.' Those on the government's side have no idea of the circumstances of ordinary people.

The Prime Minister talked about the Canberra bubble to try and set himself somehow as this different daggy dad. The former political director, former marketing manager and former Tourism Australia manager of no account who's spent his life in politics is somehow different from everybody else. Well, he is in a bubble within a bubble if he thinks that the economic recovery is well underway. We started in 2019 with an economy in deep trouble—30 years of growth gone. And now we've got a country that has low wage growth and anaemic levels of growth. The jobs that are coming out of the economy at the moment are low-quality jobs. We've got a government that's got no plan for the economy, is relying on the states for the public health response and doesn't hold a hose on bushfires. Apparently the Prime Minister, according to him, didn't direct anybody in the sports rorts affair and, despite evidence emerging this week, was entirely unaware of the very serious allegations that were made in this place many years ago.