Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We started with a robust and definitive no from the Liberal and National parties when this policy was first introduced. They said no to the Albanese Labor government's tax cuts, which apply to every single working Australian. Then we skipped through a very unedifying performance on Monday, which lacked adherence to Senate rules and even to some forms of reality, shifting the focus of those opposite from the reality of the substance of this tax cut issue that we're debating here to a banal conversation about which public servant took what phone call at which time. This showed an abject sense of desperation. Now, in a desperate bid to find another front and another way to argue out anything but the content or substance of the changes here—the Albanese Labor government tax cuts that give every Australian worker or taxpayer a tax cut—they're now here scaremongering about the things that we're not doing.

It seems rather curious to me when we're talking about a mob that lectures about trust and integrity yet was embroiled in scandals just about every single day of its nine years in government, with a Prime Minister who tried to become some clandestine one-man cabinet, which was not only unlawful but unprecedented and disrespectful to not only the Australian people but his entire party. We'll just skip past that: 'Oh, that doesn't matter. We'll forget that.' It was a government that constantly obfuscated. Let's go to robodebt. Let's go to sports rorts. And you want to sit there and lecture us about integrity. I don't think so.

The constant infighting doesn't appear to have changed that much. If you want to have a look at that, we've got some screenings on Monday nights at the moment. Just bring your own popcorn, because Nemesis is—