Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Sydney from moving the following motion immediately—That the House:

(1) notes that the:

(a) Member for Hughes has threatened to quit the Government and move to the crossbench unless his Liberal Party preselection is protected;

(b) Prime Minister is tearing the Government apart to protect the Member for Hughes but did nothing to protect the Member for Ryan, the Member for Gilmore, Senator Gichuhi or the Member for Chisholm; and

(c) Minister for Women has said the Liberal Party is widely seen as "Homophobic, anti-women, climate change deniers"; and

(2) therefore, reprimands the Prime Minister for only ever protecting the men in his party and abandoning its women.

The Prime Minister has just returned from the G20. It was good that he was able to make it, because the Treasurer didn't. We saw the very entertaining photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her cheat sheet introducing her to, I think, the seventh Australian Prime Minister that she's dealt with—the cheat sheet: 'Who is this guy? Why is he here?'

You can imagine that briefing note. It starts with a little section, 'Who is he?' Well, he's the former Liberal Party machine man, a former advertising man, sacked by tourism minister Fran Bailey. He's the former advertising guy who came in as Prime Minister, flicked the switch to vaudeville and doesn't know how to flick it back. I've said before, he is like a cross between Darrin from Bewitched and Ted Bullpitt from Kingswood Countryso confused about the world around him, so angry about the change that he sees and so worried about his job that he can't do a thing right.

The briefing goes on to say, 'What's he done in politics?' Well, he was the Treasurer who presided over the doubling of Australia's debt. He's the Treasurer who presided over historic low wages growth. He's the Prime Minister who was prepared to use the Israel-Palestine conflict, in the final week before the Wentworth by-election, to try to win a few extra votes. He's the guy who thought it would be a good idea to send a bus with his face on it around Queensland to show how in touch he is with the concerns of ordinary Queenslanders—and then caught the VIP jet to each place where the bus was stopping. It's a good backdrop for a Twitter photo; but if you're going to use the bus, you really ought to use the bus. And that briefing note goes on: 'What's he like? What's his personality like?' And there's a little briefing for the chancellor. Well, they would have had photos of the many moods of Scott Morrison—Scott Morrison angry, Scott Morrison irate, Scott Morrison furious and Scott Morrison really browned off. The many moods of Scott Morrison would have included the photo of him being angry when he ate that pie. Who can get angry when eating a pie? It's one of Australia's favourite pastimes, and he was angry even when he was eating a pie.

The conclusion of that briefing note would have been, 'Beware: this man is in thrall to the reactionary right wing of his party'—as the member for Chisholm calls it—or the 'homophobic, anti-women climate change deniers', as the member for Higgins has said. The final 'beware' is: if he puts his arm around you and says, 'I'm very ambitious for this woman,' then run! When the member for Ryan—an assistant minister, no less—was dumped, the Prime Minister went on Insiders and said about her preselection:

… it is a contestable process, politics, and this has been a rank-and-file pre-selection and we're all subject to those as members of parliament.

He also said:

Politics is a contestable process and in the Liberal Party there are no quarantines on that.

Well, I guess there are two qualifications on that. If you're a bloke, if you're ring wing, you get your pre-selection fixed up, you get it sorted out—if you're a bloke and if you're right wing. Tough luck for the member for Ryan, because she was replaced by a bloke. The member for Gilmore was also replaced by a bloke. The member for Chisholm was bullied until she left the party and was prepared to leave the parliament. As for the member for Curtin, well, thank you to the now Prime Minister for the wonderful support he gave the member for Curtin! Eleven votes—he didn't do the numbers for her; he did the numbers on her. More than a quarter of women in the Liberal Party have now said that the Liberal Party has a problem with women, that there is bullying and intimidation and a culture that is hostile to women in the Liberal Party. And what's the Prime Minister's response to that? 'Nothing to see here; no problem.' He's not investigating it—doesn't even pick up the phone to the member for Chisholm, as we heard on the weekend; he doesn't even bother to give her a call.

When you look at the Prime Minister's experience of his own preselection, he was able to sort out his own preselection pretty well back in the day, wasn't he? But when he ran for the seat of Cook in 2007, the former numbers man managed to get eight votes out of 152. I mean, that in itself raises questions, doesn't it?

And the fellow who actually won at the time, Michael Towke, was subject to an anonymous smear campaign against him, with four defamatory articles appearing in the newspaper. After relentless pressure, he finally gave up and signed a deed with the party saying that the party would publicly acknowledge him to be a fit and proper person but he would not run for preselection—and, in fact, he had to support the now Prime Minister in his preselection. That's how you sort it out, isn't it? That's pretty well done! He could have done that for the member for Gilmore or for some of the other women—if he was really interested.

The member for Cook has been very keen to say, 'It's all about merit.' It's hilarious, isn't it? When Alex Bragg stepped aside from the Wentworth preselection, saying a woman should be preselected, the Prime Minister said:

I'm a merit person and the Party members will decide our candidate in Wentworth.

…   …   …

… of course I want to see more women in the Federal Parliament.

…   …   …

We have not done as well in that area as I'd like us to do, but the Party members are the ones who have to take on that responsibility. They're the ones that have to make those decisions.

He's a 'merit guy' and he believes in rank-and-file preselections—unless it's the knuckle draggers and the Neanderthals of the extreme Right that he's protecting. In that case, of course, he's all for intervention, and merit takes on a pretty new and interesting definition compared to the way I have previously seen this word used. We've got the member for Hughes—or the member for Sky News, as he's been called—touring the country with the member for Warringah running forums called 'Back from the Brink: Saving Australia from the Left's agenda'. Left also has a slightly different definition in their world than it does in ours. The Left are obviously people who believe in climate change—those dangerous radicals who listen to the science!

The member for Hughes has said in the past that people will die during winter because of renewable energy. He's talked about non-existent subsidies to electric cars, claiming they create more pollution than diesel. He's twice gone to Azerbaijan, courtesy of the poor old put-upon Azerbaijani taxpayer, to inspect their electoral system—which he tells is actually better than the Australian electoral system. He's quoted in their media as saying he had witnessed 'a coherent, democratic process' and 'an election campaign that surpassed Australia's experience'. Well, it probably surpasses the experience in Hughes, where Liberal Party preselectors have lined up to make it clear that they want a change, that they don't want to be represented by the extreme Right in this parliament. These are normal, average, centrist Liberal Party members who don't want to be represented by the Neanderthals and the knuckle draggers. Why don't they get a say? Why don't they get a say in who represents them?

Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister, said on Twitter today that:

… to deny Liberal Party members in Hughes the opportunity to have their say—

is a problem. They're being ignored. When even Malcolm Turnbull is pointing out that Scott Morrison, the member for Cook, is too weak to stand up for what he believes in, you've really got a problem. When the man who, as Prime Minister, couldn't back a single thing that he said was a priority for him now says his successor is weak, you know we've come to a pretty pass. There are, at most, 166 days to the next election; we're wasting another one with Liberals talking about themselves.

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