Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the House condemns the Prime Minister for:

(1)leading a chaotic and incompetent government which seeks to:

(a)slug Australian students with $100,000 degrees;

(b)rip $80 a week from pensioners; and

(c)rip $6,000 from the budget of a typical Australian family;

(2)putting Australia's AAA credit rating at risk through his own incompetence and mismanagement; and

(3)having no economic plan for Australia's future

Leave not granted.

What a surprise from a chicken-hearted government. I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Maribyrnong from moving the following motion forthwith—That the House condemns the Prime Minister for:

(1)leading a chaotic and incompetent government which seeks to:

(a)slug Australian students with $100,000 degrees;

(b)rip $80 a week from pensioners; and

(c)rip $6,000 from the budget of a typical Australian family;

(2)putting Australia's AAA credit rating at risk through his own incompetence and mismanagement; and

(3)having no economic plan for Australia's future

Tony Abbott is the 'Captain Chaos' of Australian politics. He is the captain of a team who has no economic plan for Australia's future. They have no budget plan. It has been 39 days since 39 Liberal MPs voted to get rid of this Prime Minister, yet I heard that in the PMO bunker they look back on that as the golden age of this government. This government has no adoptable economic strategy. This is why standing orders should be suspended.

Government members interjecting—

Listen to the government say, 'They want to talk about everyone else's plan.' Where is the government's plan? This government is running the classic defence: 'Don't look at us; look everywhere else.' Let's have a look at the plan which they say that they want to maintain. They want to put forward $100,000 degrees for Australian university students, and it has failed in the budget, it has failed when it has gone to the Senate and it will keep failing whenever you call your election.

The real issue for why we should be suspending standing orders is that Australians have had a deep concern that they could not trust Tony Abbott. They deep down wondered: 'Can we trust Tony Abbott?' Many of us have thought you can't. But what has been revealed in recent days, in the nadir of this government's misfortune, is that this government has now junked even any pretence of a surplus. I love hearing these people talk about surplus. In 2012, Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister—I should call him 'the current Prime Minister'—said in 2012 that an incoming Liberal coalition government will bring to surplus in their first year. Remember that promise? Then we saw the old Liberal slip and slide, and they said, 'Well, we'll do it in the first three years.' But the slide did not finish there. This is one of the big slides, like you see at the show. Tony Abbott, who has made many contributions to the English language, invented 'broad balance'. Let me decode what the broad balance budget within five years will be. It is not a surplus.

Then Treasury let the cat out of the bag yesterday. This honest Treasury official, on the way through disowning that piece of propaganda called the Intergenerational report, said that there would be no surplus for 40 years. Australians have heard that right. The Treasury has said that this government cannot generate a surplus for 40 years. And what we have seen, and the reason why we have seen this, is that this so-called 'braveheart' of Australian politics, this crusading Prime Minister—and many of us have had doubts about whether we can trust him—has always had his mantra, his Holy Grail and the item that he politically genuflects before—he has always said 'surplus'. Yet what we have seen is a slip and slide away. Why? Because he wants to save his own job. There is one policy of this government: save Tony Abbott's job. There is only one budget strategy: save Tony Abbott's job.

Now the Prime Minister says: 'It'll be a dull budget. There's going to be something good for families, something good for child care. It'll be dull.' One thing about this Prime Minister is that he is never dull. But what he has done is given up his commitment to ever getting to surplus. That was a core belief. We know that Tony Abbott has trouble keeping his election promises, but at least on surplus—and we might not have liked the way that he would get to it—he has always pushed it. What I have to say to be fair to Tony Abbott here, to be fair to this Prime Minister here, is that it is not a captain's pick to dump everything they believe in or to try and just save their jobs—it is a team vote. This government leaked on each other about whose idea it was to knight Prince Philip, but when it came to leaking on each other about who opposed the bad ideas in this budget there was—unusually for this rag tag mob—radio silence! No-one anywhere can seriously say that they ever disagreed with each other on any of it: the $100,000 degrees, the cuts to family payments and, of course, the pension. The thing about this government is that, at their heart, they do not believe it is the unfairness of the budget which is the problem; they just blame the salesman. Let me tell you: you have got half the answer. You do have a problem with your salesman, but it is more than just who is selling it; it is the unfairness you are selling.

The so-called economic first officer of the nation—I am referring to the Treasurer, in case anyone was confused about who I was referring to—has got less than two months to go for their budget, and they are adrift. What the government often says is that it is just gossip—the inside talk—about the problems they have. Treasury officials have made it clear: it is five minutes to midnight, less than two months before the budget and there is no budget plan.

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