Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Today was a demonstration of why this government is not fit to continue as a government because, really, when you are elected and given the honour of being a government by the Australian people, you have two main jobs to do. Your first job is to do what you said you would do. Generally speaking, if you're elected to government, you'll have a list of things that you promised to do for the Australian people, and your first job should be to implement them to the letter and keep your promises. The second job you have is to respond to events. There are things that happen to any government that can't be expected or predicted, and the Australian people expect a government that shows the strength, the wisdom and the consistency to respond to those challenges in a way that pursues our national interest and national harmony.

Today, in multiple questions, we saw how this government has failed on both of those questions. It made a number of clear promises—the Anthony Albanese government. Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister himself, made a number of clear and direct promises to the Australian people three years ago. Prime among those was his promise to cut the Australian people's power bills by $275. He said that on almost 100 occasions ahead of the election. He promised that he would, if he got in, have the policies to reduce power bills by $275 by this financial year that we're in right now. Of course, I don't think I need to remind Australians that that promise has not been met. Since three years ago, most Australians would have received around 12 power bills—there are about a dozen bills every quarter—in their letterbox, and it would appear, almost every time, that they get higher and higher and higher. They have not gone down. In fact, the average power bill for the average family has gone up by almost $500 a year, and some big families have faced increases of $1,000 or more since this government was elected.

Not only have the bills not gone down by $275; they've instead gone up by this $500 or more. It's not just a broken promise; it's a reverse broken promise. It's gone in the opposite direction than the Prime Minister mentioned, and today, in question time, we had the embarrassing spectacle where the Leader of the Government in the Senate would not answer a simple question about whether that promise had beep kept or not. Instead, the leader of the government just deflected to what our policies were and what different types of energy are banned in this country. She could not stand behind her own promise. The question before the Australian people is, if you couldn't trust them last time, how can you trust them this time? They didn't do what they said last time, so, with anything they say and promise you in the next few weeks, how can you at all trust that they would implement those as well? You can't.

The other test that is before any government is how you respond to events. The world has been shocked in the last 18 months by the events of 7 October. They were shocking, tragic and terrible. They were on the other side of the world, but they affected all people that share sympathy with humanity and want to see decency in our world. Unfortunately, in our country, we had the almost immediate rise of tensions and divisions among different communities here in Australia with the shocking events at the Sydney Opera House just days or, I think, hours after the original attacks.

Really, from that get go, we haven't had a prime minister that's shown strength and consistency in his response. No-one expects the Prime Minister to solve the issues over there in the Middle East or even completely remove the tensions that result in this country—it's a very emotional issue for people—but, unfortunately, he hasn't shown a level of consistency in responding to this matter, and we've seemingly allowed these issues to bubble over in the past 18 months. We got to the point yesterday, perhaps—hopefully, it will be the apogee of this. Hopefully, we can finally turn the shocking tension and threats of violence around, but the revelation yesterday of two nurses in Western Sydney effectively threatening to kill people or not treat people, to leave them to die, is not something any Australian thought they would see in this country. Today, in question time, it became apparent that the government was not even aware that both of these nurses could still potentially practice outside of New South Wales. I give credit to the New South Wales government for immediately removing their registration, but that had not been done nationally, and the government was not aware. I'm advised now that, since question time, their registration has been removed across the country. I welcome that, but it does raise the question of why this government continues to seem to be flat-footed on these issues and can't respond in a strong way that brings Australians together and draws a clear line that the kind of conduct we saw will never be tolerated in our harmonious and wonderful country.