Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Therefore the Prime Minister does not have to come into this chamber and defend himself. The Prime Minister has indeed set accountability as something he is not prepared to wear both at the public level of his government as a whole and at his private level, and I will deal with both of these issues. Let us start from the moment he was elected. He said the first thing he would do would be to recall parliament before Christmas and that the only holidays that his ministers would have would be Christmas Day and Boxing Day. So what did we get? He moved straight into Kirribilli House, had a lovely holiday and appointed a new cook.

That brings us to his second promise—that is, he was going to live in the Lodge. He was not going to live in Kirribilli House but, as I said, he moved in there straight away, had a lovely party for former prime ministers—and then what does he do? He appoints himself a new cook for Kirribilli House. He promised to stop the killing of whales. He did not even send the boat out early enough to take the photographs, and the whales are still being slaughtered. ‘Fail’ on the first three counts!

He then promised, on 11 July, that he would reduce grocery bills, he would reduce the cost of petrol, he would reduce interest rates—and on all three counts ‘fail’,  ‘fail’, ‘fail’. Interest rates continue to go up, petrol prices go up and grocery prices go up. On the fourth, he said he would relieve pressure from childcare expenses. Well, guess what: the only childcare relief that was afforded was to him and his personal household at the expense of the taxpayer. A public servant was designated to be a childcarer for his own child. Our multimillionaire Prime Minister, worth $20 million at least, has got a public servant taxpayer funded childcare person to look after his childcare requirements. No relief for the nurse who is working night shift and cannot get child care, no relief for the policeman who has got to work shift work and no relief for the poor mum or dad who is out there packing shelves at Coles—

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