Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a disappointment this Labor opposition is to the people of Australia. Here we are, on the last parliamentary sitting day of the year—the year they self-proclaimed as the year of big ideas—and what do they come up with in this matter of public importance? They come up with nothing other than a bucket of slime. The people of Australia listening to this debate, the people who are out there working and driving this economy, deserve better than this. On the last day of parliament, after the opposition delivered a duck egg—well, they did have one idea, and that was to put the price of a packet of smokes up to 40 bucks; in the year of big ideas, that was their total contribution: let's raise the price of a packet of smokes to 40 bucks, just brilliant; that is all they could come up with—we see this MPI to be nothing other than a bucket of slime.

Whey couldn't they, on this last sitting day of parliament, really come up with some ideas? Why couldn't they come up with some ideas and let us debate how we can increase the exports in our country? How about having a debate on how we can improve national productivity, or how we can continue to cut red tape, or what we can do to enhance our nation's competitiveness? What about things we can do to encourage entrepreneurship, or to encourage innovation and start-ups? What about new job creation? We should be here having a debate on that during this MPI. What about upgrading our nation's roads?—especially when we know people in this country will lose their lives over the Christmas holiday. Why aren't we having a debate about our nation's roads, or building more dams, or upgrading our infrastructure?

What about tackling the problem of Islamic extremism? Why are we not having a debate here on this last day of parliament? Or tackling domestic violence? Here is a novel idea: how about working to bring the budget back to surplus? That might be an idea. We could go one further—we can even look at paying back that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of debt that you blokes ran up when you were sitting on this side of the chamber. But, no, we get nothing other than a bucket of slime.

Those opposite should be ashamed of themselves. Today, 3 December, is the International Day of People with Disability. Why would you not propose for the MPI how we could work together in this parliament to improve the lives of people with disabilities? We all agree on the NDIS, but we have no idea how we are going to afford to pay for it. Why aren't we discussing that? Instead, the opposition just come up with a bucket of slime. They should all be ashamed for putting up this matter. We should not be debating this here in the parliament—we should be debating ideas about making our country a better place instead of this disgraceful slime bucket they have brought to the parliament.

This discussion on the need for the government to maintain standards of integrity can be rebutted with three words: 'pot', 'kettle', 'black'. We are happy to debate integrity with those guys every single day of the week. We can remember those infamous words, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' and yet when they all came over to this side and were asked who wanted a carbon tax, they all said 'Aye'. And they want to lecture us about integrity! These are the ones who cooked the books in the 2011 budget to move expenditure forward out of the budget and bring revenue in, trying to create a phoney surplus. They could not even achieve that. We are getting on with the job of doing the right thing by this country. We are working with those free trade agreements; we are working to increase competitiveness. We are working to create jobs and we are working to drive the entrepreneurial spirit of this nation. I hope that over the Christmas period the opposition go away and think about things so that maybe next year they can come up with a few big ideas rather than return to the disgraceful performance that they have put up with over the past 12 months.

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