Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I have enjoyed listening to the debate thus far. I haven't pointed this out before, but 'back on track' is an interesting slogan. It was a slogan for the team of the ultramilitant Builders Labourers Federation ticket in the 1980s and the 1990s within the current construction union. It was an interesting ticket and an interesting idea.

Some of the themes that sit behind Mr Dutton and 'back on track' sound like the same things that I used to listen to in the building industry from these unreconstructed Trotskyites. There was a very similar sentimentality about the moribund, shonky leadership that there had been before, which is exactly what we're seeing from Mr Morrison's leftovers in the Liberal Party today. They just want to get back on track to where Scott Morrison had the show, where government efficiency was billions and billions of dollars out the door. At the Department of Veterans' Affairs—some of the senators here were with me in Senate estimates where you'd hear of billions and billions of dollars going to shonky labour hire contractors in Veterans' Affairs. No work ever got done. People's friends were enriched in the process. No work ever got done. Waiting times blew out. There were 45,000 veterans—the people who we should be looking after—just waiting for their claims to be assessed. The minister was just sitting on his hands. Bureaucracy was stuck because it was not focused on its job.

We've come into government and fixed Veterans' Affairs. What do we hear from these characters? They want to get back on track, back to sacking all of the public servants who've been engaged and employed in country towns and regional centres all over Australia, helping veterans get the services that they need. Why would you want to go back to the Morrison show, where Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, was a sort of leading light and second-string character on the policy front? Why would you want to get back on track to that? It was a road to ruin that we had when Labor took government in 2022. The country was in diabolical trouble. Inflation was higher than six per cent, and it was going up.

I agree with some of what Senator Rennick said—some of it, Senator Rennick.