Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Malcolm Turnbull's policies are exactly the same as Tony Abbott's. This weekend we were going to launch in Bendigo our Save Local Jobs campaign, and we had done all the preparation of material. In this material, we were calling on the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and the Liberal government to do more to save local jobs. We were calling on the government to sign the Hawkei contract to lock in defence manufacturing jobs. We were calling on this government to reverse its big cuts to health, education and community services and to restore jobs in those sectors. We were calling on this government to make sure that it stopped sacking public servants in our area and stopped the closures of really important front-line government agencies.

But guess what: they changed the Prime Minister, so we were a little bit worried. Could we turn it around and get the material ready in time for this weekend? Well, guess what: it was not a hard job. It was simply a 'find and replace' action on the Word document, because this government and this Prime Minister have not changed the policies; they have simply changed the person who is at the front trying to convince Australians they are the right way to go. I agree with the comments by a local cyclist in the BendigoAdvertiser: 'This bloke's a bit of a diplomat that tries to tell people what they want to hear. It's not leadership.'