Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and the Public Service (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Senators Cameron and Sterle and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to the Prime Minister (Mr Morrison).

I have to say the responses to questions today really go to the nature of the muppet show known as the Morrison government—that is, answers that deal with questions related to the Prime Minister's fundamental lack of judgement and competence. It's really no wonder that the Prime Minister chose to use the words 'muppet show' to describe his own government, because in actuality words to this effect were used to describe his performance during his time at Tourism Australia.

What we've seen from revelations only this week is that not only was the decision to dismiss Mr Morrison from the independent agency 'unanimous by the board and the minister' but the Auditor-General described the Prime Minister's time at the helm of the agency as having 'numerous anomalies and concerns over contracts worth $184 million'. These decisions reflect a serious breach of procurement guidelines and they are significant indictments on his judgement. They show that the current Prime Minister is frankly not suited to the role. He is unable to manage an independent agency, and he has now been promoted to run the nation, regardless of the fact that he has shown an appalling lack of judgement.

There is plenty of evidence around the lack of judgement in his time at Tourism Australia. We heard that today in the question that was asked by Senator Cameron to Senator Cormann today. The fact is that the entire Tourism Australia board, former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tim Fischer, the former Minister for Small Business and Tourism, Fran Bailey, and former Prime Minister Howard refused to step in and save Mr Morrison, because he was incompetent. He lacks judgement.

It's not only in his time in Tourism Australia. He has been the Prime Minister since 24 August. What has happened in that time? What has he shown about his competency and judgement? Obviously, we've got the issue that he raised about moving the Australian embassy. That was an issue he raised that has overwhelmingly backfired on the Prime Minister. He raised that issue, an important issue, just to try to score political points in the by-election in the seat of Wentworth.

Yesterday, we had the issue around Foodbank. His own colleagues came out against him on Foodbank. He's had to backflip—thankfully—on cutting that funding. He has also now been caught out around the briefing he gave the former Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, when he sent him off to Indonesia to represent the government. He got caught out telling a different story than Mr Turnbull told. He had to backtrack on that. And we have his bus—his bus that is going around the country, but he's not on it. He gets on and off just for the photo opportunity. He's flying around. And, of course, who could forget the hip-hop song that he had to come out and apologise for: 'Scott Morrison removes cringe-worthy social media video over inappropriate rap lyrics.'

I've just sat down here and gone through some of the things that this Prime Minister has done that he's had to backflip on, that he's had to apologise on. There are very many serious issues that the Prime Minister just doesn't get. He's got an appalling lack of judgement, not only around the Great Barrier Reef and the grant that was given—he's taken responsibility for that as well—but we all know that he was Minister for Social Services for less than 10 months. He really must go. (Time expired)

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It fascinates me that the party of Latham, Rudd, Gillard, Rudd, Shorten and almost Albanese wants to open up a discussion about competency in leadership. Take nothing I say as a reflection on Prime Minister Morrison. Fifteen years you've waited to raise an issue so compelling that it dominates everything in your debate at the moment. It just shows, as is always the case when these lightweight attacks come from the Australian Labor Party, that they've got nothing else substantive to talk about. Question time is that valuable time in this place that allows the opposition—in this case, the Australian Labor Party—to highlight and explore critical issues to this nation around the economy, around social services, around support we're putting in place for agriculture. What do they choose to take that time up with? What do they choose to spend time on in the take note opportunity? They choose such a featherweight issue on events that have not occupied their minds for 13 years and, suddenly, are now writ large.

I'll tell you why they're attacking Prime Minister Morrison. They realise the risk that Mr Shorten and the Labor Party face at the next election on the question of competency. Mr Morrison secured our borders after years and years and years of neglect—hundreds of thousands of arrivals, 1,200 people. It always fascinates me that, when we're talking about matters of national security and security of our borders, the Labor Party never once mentioned that their policy directly led to the loss of life of 1,200 individuals, many of whose names will never be known—men, women and children. And you want to have a discussion about competency? Your current leader was in your leadership team at the time those policies were in place. Prime Minister Morrison came along and fixed it, and fixed it good. He resecured the borders of this nation to this day. We inherited the legacy of Manus and Nauru, and there's an enormous amount of effort put in by you featherweights and those in the Greens to try and plaster this current administration with the event of children in custody in Nauru and the other centre.

So, if you want to have a discussion about competency, I'll have the discussion with you every day, and so will everyone from the coalition. We'll talk about competency to run the economy. The Prime Minister, no matter what happens in the future, will be remembered for arresting the deficiencies that came with the deficits that you left us with—structural deficits that have gone on for years—and future deficits. He will take credit for arresting that and returning us to surplus, along with the efforts of our current leader in the Senate. So, if you want to have a talk about competency in relation to Prime Minister Morrison, we're just the right people. If you want to talk about the honesty of Prime Minister Morrison, let's have a discussion about Shorten and Gillard and all the very dark allegations that remain writ large and have never been answered about their conduct back in the trade union movement—building houses, materials, donations going—

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought you weren't going to talk about things from 10 years ago.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take the interjection from Senator Watt, because I know he's excited. Apparently he had his annual visit to country Australia the other day, as he advised the chamber—he ventured to Nambour.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was Moranbah, actually!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I promise, through you Madam Chair, he would never be game to go to Moranbah without a beard, a false moustache and a big pair of sunglasses, because they would tar and feather him in Moranbah for his resistance to the coal industry. Let me just close: you've come in here every day with your ineffective attacks on the Prime Minister. He will stand up, and we will stand up for him, because we are 100 per cent right.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers to Senator Cameron's question and to put some more contemporary facts on the table. I accept that the coalition is attempting to say that this was all so long ago that it's not relevant and it doesn't matter. But I think it's entirely superficial to say that what happened in those times is no longer relevant. If you go to the record of the parliament, you will find that the Select Committee on the Recent Allegations relating to Conditions and Circumstances at the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru found a glaring example of the lack of governance and due diligence of this particular minister.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate, sitting at the table today, was the only person, as the Minister for Finance, who was able to grant an expediency motion to the department of immigration to authorise the expenditure outside the public works committee of this parliament. That never, ever happened. There was no expediency motion through the House of Representatives. There was an incredible amount of expenditure in Nauru which did not go through the proper probity and governance of the parliament. Minister Morrison walked straight around the oldest standing committee of the parliament. And, when the department was asked about it, they conflated this view that 'it's aid to a foreign country and we don't have to refer it'. That was a subterfuge; that was not correct. If that is correct, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade do not have to notify when they're building a new embassy in Nairobi, in Jakarta or in Bangkok, and we know that they do all of those things.

Minister Morrison spent, over a period of his early ministership, $1.3 billion in Nauru. Four hundred and fifty million dollars was spent in 10 months; $2,000 was spent per day per asylum seeker; $1.3 million was spent a day; and $610,000 per asylum seeker was spent to live in a mouldy tent. No, I take that back—it was a marquee. But, after 402 days, it was a mouldy tent. If that expenditure of $36 million to build those mouldy tents had gone through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, proper probity and scrutiny would have probably ensured that that wasn't a really good idea—to take people in the tropics, akin to Darwin, and stick them for 402 days in a mouldy tent at the cost of $36 million. It's detrimental to their health and detrimental to the people who are looking after them in that area. It was really poor governance and due diligence.

It doesn't stop there. They went and spent hand over fist, citing urgency and citing expediency but not following the due diligence for probity of parliament. None of it went through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. The government response to that Senate select committee was, 'The department provided a response to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works on 14 August 2015.' That was a letter saying, 'We've got this legal advice that we don't have to come your way.' The next part is, 'The department will continue to ensure that future public works in the Republic of Nauru are referred.' So there's a clear example of this person purporting to be an exemplar of due diligence—an exemplar of public probity and governance hasn't got clean hands.

In the earlier parliament—the first parliament when they came in—they had a clear example from the Gillard-Rudd government where an expediency motion granted by the finance minister passed through the House of Representatives, and there was feedback to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works on progress. They didn't do any of that. It is as simple as this: they didn't realise that, because the old parliament had lapsed, they had to do the process again. So, in the process they were supposed to do in their rush to do whatever, they didn't follow due process. That relates directly back to Prime Minister Morrison. It's never been rebutted in this place. This speech is in the Hansard. It was never rebutted by the finance minister. It was never rebutted by any of those on the other side. It stands to be true.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For those that might be listening or watching at home, I think it's important to be clear that the House of Representatives is not sitting this week, which means that Labor senators have to operate independently of their House colleagues. And boy, haven't we seen where the real power, the real authority, the real skill is—I'm stretching it a bit there. The real skill is not in the Australian Senate for the Australian Labor Party; it might be in the House of Representatives. What we have had this week is a very lacklustre and weak attempt at trying to undermine—

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Senator Brown, I thought your contribution was particularly lacklustre. You were trying to undermine the credibility of the Prime Minister—the evidence is there and I'll come to it in a moment—on what was a very successful marketing campaign aimed at encouraging visitors to Australia. It was so successful that Kevin Rudd, when he was the opposition leader, said it was 'great'; you won't be surprised to learn that, when he became the Prime Minister, he changed his tune. I will just take people back down memory lane for a bit. This was the 'Where the bloody hell are you?' marketing campaign. It featured an outback pub, fireworks on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a bikini-clad young woman called Lara Bingle. It was successful.

Senator Cormann has drawn to the attention of the Senate in his contribution today that this campaign contributed an additional $2.1 billion to the tourism industry's bottom line over 2006-07. He also shared with the Senate that the Australian National Audit Office itself has said that the accounts were found to be a true and fair view of its final position. Senator Cormann said that the Prime Minister, in his role at Tourism Australia, met all the requirements and that people were fully satisfied. The number of nights stayed by international visitors increased by 12 per cent as a result of the marketing campaign. The tourism spend in Australia increased by 10 per cent, and there was an increase of three per cent in the economic value of inbound tourism to $18.8 billion. Having presided over the Tourism Australia 'Where the bloody hell are you?' campaign is a demonstration—not a criticism—of the Prime Minister's acumen.

We've heard a lot over the last two days about what Tim Fischer, the former Deputy Prime Minister, had to say. What did Tim Fischer have to say? You'll have to trawl back through the archives, but on 26 July 2006, in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, he praised Mr Morrison's performance. He said: 'I acknowledge the dedicated contribution Scott Morrison has made to Tourism Australia—in particular, with the development and launch of the new international marketing campaign.'

Lacklustre and dispirited—that is the way Labor has prosecuted a very lame attempt at trying to undermine the community's confidence in the Prime Minister. So you might well ask yourself: where the bloody hell have you been? I know where the coalition has been. It's been out there developing and implementing a campaign for personal income tax reduction. It's been out there building confidence in the Australian economy. It's been out there driving economic growth in our country. It's been out there negotiating with the states and territories for a fairer share of the GST, a deal that no-one thought could be done. That is a deal that not only rewards Western Australia and corrects the great anomaly in regard to the GST issue but also benefits every state and territory. I know where the coalition has been; it has been out there working and building confidence in the Australian economy for families and for small businesses.

So, where has Labor been? Where the bloody hell has Labor been? I know where you've been. You've been building a plan for higher taxes. You've been building a plan for slower economic growth. You've been building a plan to dismantle all of the economic growth and prosperity that this country has seen over many, many years. That's where you've been. You'll have to lift your game. The House of Representatives will be back in a few days time. You've got a chance. (Time expired)

David Smith (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy President, I seek leave to table the documents referred to by Senator Carr in question time today.

Leave granted.

I also rise to take note of the answers from the Minister representing the Prime Minister in question time today. The answers by the minister in question time today cannot disguise the repeated lack of judgement and transparency shown by the current Prime Minister. His lack of judgement has been on display for all to see since the leadership coup against Malcolm Turnbull. It was on display in his previous role as minister and it was there during his tenure as head of Tourism Australia. The Prime Minister has done his best to try to hide the details of his sacking from Tourism Australia and the reasons for his dismissal. Apparently we're meant to believe that he was supremely competent. We don't know if his sacking was because of maladministration. We don't know if his sacking was because he was seen as a malcontent. We don't know if his sacking was because of a cringe-worthy campaign. Maybe it was because he was spending too much time doing the numbers. What we do know is that, in the words of the minister at the time, 'it was a unanimous decision to get rid of Mr Morrison by the board and the minister.' It was a decision that was backed by the Prime Minister, John Howard. We also know that nothing less than the Auditor-General's report from that time outlined information being kept from the board, government procurement guidelines being breached and contracts of up to $184 million being awarded to private companies without any assessment of value for money. It all sounds way too familiar.

We also know that the Prime Minister's approach to our relationship with our neighbours might also appear by some to be cringe-worthy and lacking judgement. The declaration in the days before the Wentworth by-election, that Australia would consider moving our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, showed a complete and utter disregard for the sensitivities of one of our most important relationships—that with our largest neighbour, Indonesia—and all in a vain attempt to win a by-election. Well, we know how that worked out. It's not surprising that this thought bubble burst as soon as the polls closed in Wentworth. But the damage had been done, and it's clear that this is impacting on our trade relationship, as reported in the news today. We know that this is true. What we also know is that Australians deserve the opportunity that the Tourism Australia board and the former Minister for Tourism had all those years ago at Tourism Australia: the opportunity to terminate the Prime Minister's employment by going to an early election.

Question agreed to.