Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

By the concession of the Leader of the House, that was a speech with no purpose at all other than to wait for others to arrive and we thank him for it. He performed it valiantly!

I think it was significant when he said that the Treasurer is going to be the one introducing this legislation, because what we see with the legislation that will be presented shortly—and we are not going to oppose this suspension of standing orders; they will be able to introduce their bill and we will go through the normal processes—is that a Treasurer who has no plans for policy can stand up and move a bill about politics. A government that has no plans for the economy has plans for one issue only, and that is the voting system. That says everything about those opposite, that we have a government where the Treasurer could spend 46 minutes at the National Press Club and at the end of it nobody knew what he said. But he comes in here, and if it is about votes and how votes are counted, then he understands that and he will have a bill for that. But if it is about jobs—nothing. If it is about the economy—nothing. So long as it is about the voting system it raises the interest of the Treasurer. He will rush in here and introduce a bill.

Mr Nikolic interjecting—

He will announce more policy in introducing a bill in someone else's portfolio than he did for three-quarters of an hour before the National Press Club in what was meant to be a prepared speech. It is an extraordinary situation, that the state of economic leadership in this country is such that the Treasurer of Australia has nothing to say about his own job. The only thing that will get him to rise to his feet in this parliament is to talk about how votes are counted.

Well, those on the backbench know how much he was doing on how votes would be counted in their own party room. Those on the backbench know all too well the obsession of this Treasurer on the internal machinations of the Liberal Party. I do appreciate it that the moment I talk about the Treasurer's role on the internal machinations and have a go at him on that, the member for Bass stops interjecting against me! I appreciate that. You could not shut him up a minute ago when he was wanting to defend where they were on the economy, but the moment it is the internals of this government, at the moment it is the fact that those opposite spend every waking hour arguing about each other's jobs and not a moment on the jobs of the rest of Australia—spend every chance they can fighting each other for the spoils of government—well. That is what they want to do.

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