House debates

Monday, 24 November 2014

Motions

Prime Minister; Attempted Censure

3:07 pm

Photo of Christopher PyneChristopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very broad motion and I would remind the Leader of the Opposition that at no point during his rambling speech did the government take the general point of order that he was not talking to the suspension of standing orders, so I intend to use this as an opportunity to outline to the House and to the Australian people the realities of the political situation that we found ourselves in 12 months ago.

Twelve months ago, after 2007 to 2013, one of the most rotten governments in Australia history was cut down by the Australian people in a landslide defeat. It was not a fluke. It did not just happen. They did not just fall out of office. It was not by one or two seats or half a per cent. They were beaten and beaten badly, because they had six years of the most grotesque chaos and dysfunction that the Australian public has ever had to tolerate.

Let's go through it. They had a Prime Minister in Kevin Rudd. They went to bed one night with Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister and they woke up the next morning with Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister. They went to bed one night with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister and the next morning they woke up and Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister again. In a six-year period they managed to knife two Prime Ministers in the back, led by the Leader of the Opposition, 'Bill the knife'. In fact, it was exposed by Paul Kelly in his excellent book, where he wrote: 'The Gillard camp was contemptuous of Shorten, considering him weak and duplicitous'.

The Australian public know that for all of the huffing and puffing, all of the confected outrage from the Leader of the Opposition, he has not at any point said that he would put any of the money back that he claims has been taken from any of the areas of government spending. Whether it is efficiency dividends or whether it is a reduction in the increase in spending, he has not said he will put any of that money back or return things to the state they were in in 2013, because he knows that he cannot.

At the next election, in 2016, the Australian public will be faced with the prospect of electing a weak and duplicitous Leader of the Opposition, who could not stay loyal to one Prime Minister, let alone two Prime Ministers, because he was so ambitious, so ruthless and so relentless in his pursuit of power that he stabbed two Prime Ministers in the back, not just one.

During those six year we had Harry Jenkins stabbed in the back and replaced by Peter Slipper, as the Speaker. We had Craig Thomson defended and supported by this Leader of the Opposition and by Julia Gillard throughout the tawdry period when we were trying to bring Craig Thomson into this House to explain himself. We had the pink batts disaster. We had 'cash for clunkers'. We had $16.5 billion wasted on school halls throughout Australia. We had the live cattle export disaster, based on one television program on Four Corners. The Labor Party thought it was good public policy to destroy the live cattle export industry in Australia, putting 1,000 Indigenous workers out of their jobs, destroying livelihoods, destroying farms and breaking people all across Northern Australia.

Opposition members interjecting

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