Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must say I am very pleased that the Leader of the Opposition, the honourable member for Maribyrnong, has phrased the matter of public importance in the manner in which he has. If we had been asked to debate the topic of what it is the Prime Minister has actually done, I would have sat down by now.

Whenever I am asked to reflect upon what it is that the Prime Minister has actually done in the last 12 months, I cannot help but keep coming back to Monty Python's Life of Brian, in that famous scene in which the People's Front of Judea asked, 'What have the Romans ever done for us?' But the problem is that, like most sequels, it is horribly disappointing, because unlike in Life of Brian, in which the People's Front of Judea are able to reel off quite a lot of things that the Romans had actually done for them, in this sequel what we have seen is a Prime Minister who has failed to deliver any single thing of substance in the course of the last 12 months.

Let's just dig down a little deeper in relation to what it is the Prime Minister has failed to deliver. You heard it in question time. In the course of the issue of marriage equality, he inherited a flawed plebiscite concept from the honourable member for Warringah. The Prime Minister could have done something. He could have led from the front, and he could have made marriage equality a reality with the stroke of a pen, but he has failed to deliver on marriage equality.

You might ask yourself: what is it that the Prime Minister has done in relation to the issue of health? Well, he has failed to deliver in the last 12 months in relation to the issue of health care. Perhaps we should reflect on that further. Perhaps we can concede there are a couple of things he has done.

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