Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is very much a glass jaw on the backbench over there—definitely.

When the now Prime Minister rolled Tony Abbott, he said, 'We're going to have a new style of leadership—good government, sound policy, advocacy not slogans. We will respect the intelligence of the Australian people.' Fine words, you might say, but you have to have a look at what they have done. The thing that we have learned over the last six months is that they have no control over what they are doing. You have the Prime Minister say one thing in the morning and one thing in the afternoon. His office clarifies and then the next day his Assistant Treasurer is out there and she obviously has not read the talking points that are available to everyone, because she gets it wrong as well.

Let us have a look at what we have had under the government. We have gross debt now over $400 billion. The first thing they did when they came into government was to remove the debt ceiling. They did not want to have to come into this place and stand up and say why they were increasing this nation's debt. What they have done is doubled it. Gross debt is now up 47.2 per cent since this lot were elected—the so-called economic wizards, the people that claim that they are the great looker-afters of the Australian economy. We have seen net debt up 57 per cent. It has gone up $274 billion since they got elected.

We can have a look at the NBN. Of course, it is now not the NBN; it is the MTM, the Malcolm Turnbull mess. It is failing everywhere. People cannot get access to it. It is not working. It was going to be cheaper and it was going to be better, but what have we seen? A slowed-down rollout. 'We've taken away fibre-optic, because now we're going to use copper, because that's what we used at the turn of the last century.' That is why we see that it has now gone out to a $56 billion cost. We have had them come in here and say that everyone was going to have access to the National Broadband Network by 2016. Lo and behold, they cannot do it. As usual they overreach, overpromise and underdeliver. That is the worst thing you can do when you are in sales.

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