Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

of cutting pollution, transforming businesses and providing assistance to households while we build a cleaner economy. We have from the Leader of the National Party the proposition by interjection that it is 'breaking the country'. What a nonsense. They are still going on with their fear campaign even though it has failed.

The facts and figures have arrived, and, like the Wizard of Oz, the Leader of the Opposition is now revealed as a humbug. He is just a man behind the curtain still furiously pulling the levers and pressing the buttons when his time has well and truly run out. This Leader of the Opposition has no policies and no positive contribution to make to this country, so, true to form, all he can resort to is throwing mud, raking muck and spreading untruths, misrepresentations, falsehoods and fabrications. To put it bluntly: he is just plain making things up. He makes things up about the government's policies, and he is making things up in his attack on the Prime Minister.

But the Australian people are onto him. Australians are over the aggressive and negative charade we have had to endure in this place for the last three years. The Liberal Party, in fact, has had to send out the Deputy Leader of the Opposition day after day this week to do the dirty work while they worked out to do with the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition has mostly been too gutless to front his own smear campaign, but, when the Deputy Leader of the Opposition opens her mouth and extracts her foot from it, her leader's relentless negativity comes flying out. We know it all too well: straight from the chief of staff's dirt file comes a thick folder which is full of the Leader of the Opposition's words and instructions.

What issues has the Deputy Leader of the Opposition raised anyway? Her mate Ralph Blewitt has admitted that he does not have any real allegations. He was asked this question by Michael Smith: 'is it fair to say that you, Mr Blewitt, and Wilson certainly knew the association was a sham but is it fair to say that Ms Gillard knew it was a sham?' Ralph Blewitt said: 'I do not know if she knew.' So Blewitt blew it. He has blown the lid right off this complete fabrication of a smear campaign against the Prime Minister. We can see it for the pathetic muckraking campaign it has been. It has come to its end today. The only person who did actually know was Bruce Wilson and he has made it clear that the Prime Minister knew absolutely categorically nothing.

The so-called smoking gun today—on which this last pathetic attack that we saw in question time and before question time from the opposition was based—about the Prime Minister having written a letter to the Western Australian registrar, has been shown to be a total non-event as well. All we have had is an updated interview that actually confirms the Prime Minister's account of events. It backs up everything she has said. This same transcript—and you can read it in the Australian today; not that it would form part of the Australian headlines—records her answering a question from Peter Gordon in this interview, where Gordon asked: 'And so the last you had to do with this association was when you attended to its incorporation?' The Prime Minister said in 1995, 'Yes, that is right.' She has said nothing different in the 17 years since. The work that she did in 1992—more than 20 years ago—stopped at the incorporation of this association. So much for this smear campaign. So much for the Leader of the Opposition saying to the people of Australia this morning that the Prime Minister had committed a crime when she was in legal practice.

The Leader of the Opposition was given his opportunity; he was given his 15 minutes to substantiate that allegation and he came up with nothing. He rambled on with smear and innuendo. After nine minutes he could not even go past that. He had to resort to a more generalised attack to do with unions generally on the government. That is how pathetic this Leader of the Opposition has shown himself to be. Making totally unsubstantiated allegations, handcuffed as he is to the smear and the filth. That is all he knows. It is not befitting an alternative Prime Minister. Let us talk about what is 'becoming'—that was the Leader of the Opposition's word. He could not substantiate his allegation this morning that the Prime Minister had committed a crime. He squibbed it. He went only to that there had been, he alleged, 'conduct unbecoming' a Prime Minister. What we have seen has been conduct disgraceful and unbecoming of someone who is holding himself up as an alternative Prime Minister in this country. It is an example of rash overreach, disgraceful behaviour which demonstrates loudly and clearly the complete unsuitability of this man to lead our country. The only dignified thing for this opposition is to drop the charade.

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