Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I too congratulate you for joining the Speaker's panel. This debate on the appropriations legislation is an opportunity to look across the agenda of this government and to look back on the election campaign and the foundation that it laid for the coming parliament.

Yesterday, when this debate commenced, was the 100th day since the last federal election—100 days since the Prime Minister promised us 'stable government'. Well, it is not going well. A fortnight ago, the Prime Minister showed that he is a fake Sydney Swans fan when he could not even get off the second verse of their team song on Melbourne radio, but we have known that he is a fake leader for some months now. He is unable to say two sentences without first checking the words with Senator Bernardi or the member for Dawson and the ideological extremists in his party room.

One hundred days into the term of this government, it is clear that the Prime Minister is following the ideological extremists in his party room instead of leading them. The seeds of the destruction of this Prime Minister's leadership authority were sown early in his tenure, indeed before he became the Prime Minister. When launching his challenge against the member for Warringah, the Prime Minister had a choice. He could have said to his party room that he was up for the role but that to be effective he needed to be able to lead; and to say that he would take his colleagues views into account, surely, but that he would not trade away his own deeply held personal convictions. We all know that this is not the choice that the Prime Minister made. Instead, the Prime Minister built himself a gilded cage. He offered up his personal political convictions on climate change, on marriage equality and on the republic, and he handed power to the ideological extremists in his party room. To realise his life's ambition, he chose to destroy himself.

The Prime Minister made a fundamental political miscalculation by trying to negotiate with extremists. As David Cameron has learnt this year, and as the US Republican leadership is learning as we speak, you cannot negotiate with ideologues. If you give them a win, they will just be back asking for more on a another issue the next week. For them, the point is not the substance and it is not the outcome. It is about showing that you are more ideologically pure than those around you. You will never be able to placate them, Prime Minister. The more that the Prime Minister moves towards them, the more that they will move away from him. This is the dynamic that was set in place the moment the Prime Minister went and bent the knee to the conservatives in his party room. A real leader would understand this, but not this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's actions created a leadership vacuum on the conservative side of Australian politics, both in the coalition party room and in the broader community and, since the start of the federal election, a very nasty sludge has begun to seep into the void. Some of it has been coming from his own party; some from parties outside the coalition.

The last federal election will be remembered for some time not as the jobs and growth election, but as the election that returned the politics of One Nation to this federal parliament. The repulsive, un-Australian views of this political party do not reflect the successful multicultural nation that we have built over the last 20 years. However, the scapegoating, snake oil-selling politics of One Nation was allowed in the last federal election by the vacuum of leadership left by this Prime Minister. The return of One Nation followed an election campaign in which the Prime Minister allowed the immigration minister to claim that 'illiterate and innumerate refugees' would take Australian jobs and 'languish' on the dole—without rebuke. Goodbye dog whistle; hello megaphone. This was an election campaign in which the Prime Minister allowed the member for Dawson to publicly oppose the resettlement of any Muslim refugees in his electorate because:

These refugees will either fill jobs Australian workers can do or they will be on welfare, paid for by more taxes from Australian workers.

Again, without rebuke. The Prime Minister let this genie out of the bottle, and now Australia will reap the whirlwind.

Since the election we have seen these fringe elements of Australian politics move to centre stage and set up shop running the Senate and the government. We found out who was really in charge of this government in the very first week of this parliament. Before the Governor-General's speech had even been delivered the public learnt of a notice of motion for a bill gutting section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act that had been signed by every coalition backbench senator bar one, as well as seven crossbenchers, including the newly-elected One Nation senators. The repeal and the gutting of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act did not appear in the Governor-General's speech; this was an agenda being imposed on this Prime Minister by the extremists in his party room.

The sexual tension between the extreme right of the Liberal Party and One Nation only grew from this first encounter. The member for Dawson stated that One Nation:

… were not looking at ousting an MP who was advocating the same sort of views espoused by One Nation.

And further:

The views of One Nation to a degree are the views of many in the rank and file of the Liberal-National Party.

Again, with no rebuke from the Prime Minister. Senator Bernardi even suggested that:

… One Nation and others who are saying the things that I think the Liberal Party should be saying, with a bit more nuance and maybe a little bit more delicacy.

This is Malcolm Turnbull's LNP, a party of MPs proudly proclaiming that they are 'advocating the same sort of views espoused by One Nation' and that they 'should be saying the same things as One Nation' but maybe with a little bit more spin and a little bit more political sophistication on top—again, with no rebuke from the absent Prime Minister.

We already know from hard experience that this Prime Minister is too weak to do anything about this, but the failure of any Liberal MPs to speak out against this mollycoddling of One Nation has been genuinely depressing. I grew up in Queensland. I remember the first time Hansonism came to this country, and I recall the leadership of Senator Ron Boswell and I recall the leadership of Premier Rob Borbidge, a man who took a stand against the politics of One Nation. They fought it in the communities, risked their political future and burnt political capital, because they knew that the values of One Nation were not the values of our country. They knew that the future of our country rests not with the scapegoating and snake oil of One Nation, but in the inclusive multicultural society that we have become. They stood up to One Nation and they saw off the threat—they did not accommodate it. Today, instead of being rebuked, these MPs who have accommodated One Nation have been invited to the centre of policymaking in the Turnbull government, writing policy on superannuation, on the backpacker tax and on climate change.

The Prime Minister's humiliation on climate change is now surely complete. From an opposition leader who once said that he would never lead a political party that was not as committed to real action on climate change as he was to a Prime Minister running a baseless scare campaign on renewable energy, the member for Wentworth's fall has been precipitous. Before the Prime Minister was elected to the office he publicly stated that he believed that Australia needed to move to nearly 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050. Last week he was attacking the South Australian Labor Party for supporting renewable energy in that state. Before the election he was congratulating the South Australian government on their renewable energy policies. After the election he was ignoring advice from energy market experts and listening to Barnaby Joyce about the operation of the South Australian grid. It is indeed the most exciting time to be an extreme conservative ideologue in Australia!

Indeed, the only agility and innovation that the Prime Minister has shown is in the speed of his capitulation to the right wing of his party. It is almost as though this has been the sole product of the Prime Minister's innovation agenda, the ideas boom: an act for capitulating on your moderate values. It is not Siri; it is Bernardi. 'Bernardi, can I have a free vote on marriage equality in the parliament?' 'No, Prime Minister.' 'Bernardi, can I take real action on climate change?' 'I'm sorry, Prime Minister, I don't understand that.'

In contrast, Labor has provided staunch leadership and direction about the kind of country that we want to be. We understand that you cannot pander to the scapegoating of populist ideologues. Australia needs a government that will stand up to the hard right's demagoguery. Unlike the Prime Minister during the campaign, the Leader of the Opposition demonstrated leadership. He immediately condemned the immigration minister's appalling and ignorant comments, saying:

Mr Dutton didn’t just insult refugees when he made those comments. He insulted the millions of migrants who've contributed to making this a truly great country—refugees like Victor Chang, like Richard Pratt, like Frank Lowy.

I represent an electorate that is comprised of around 60 per cent of the constituents being either born overseas or having their parents born overseas. Suburbs that I represent, like Sunshine, have two-thirds of the constituents speaking a language other than English at home. I have many thousand Vietnamese Australians, refugees to this country, who have enriched our nation beyond measure. They noticed the Prime Minister's comments and they noticed the Leader of the Opposition's leadership in rebuking the immigration minister's comments. They know the value of the nation that we have built and of the Australian identity that we have worked so hard to build since Federation.

The Labor Party, working in conjunction with a broad-based campaign from Australia's multicultural communities stopped and reversed the Abbott government's first attempts to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and again showed true leadership when this parliament by again successfully pushing for the same racial harmony motion agreed by the House in 1996 earlier this week. The contrast could not be starker. When the parliament returned after the election, the priority of the conservative ideologues in the coalition party room was a motion to gut the Racial Discrimination Act. The priority of the Labor Party was a unifying motion that could be supported by all members in the parliament, condemning race-based politics in this country. The distinction is stark.

Labor understands that we need to respond to the appeal of One Nation with a sharp political strategy that addresses people's legitimate grievances. Government must invest in its people and promote fairness and inclusion, investing in education and tackling inequality. A generation ago, the Beattie government responded to marginalisation by devolving public institutions closer to these communities, making sure that disenfranchised voters felt more included in the democratic process. There were a range of democratic innovations pursued by the Beattie government. They pushed institutions closer to the public and then they brought government to them. They heard priorities for investment from marginalised communities, from people who felt disenfranchised, and they matched government investment and funding to those concerns.

That is the way that you confront the scourge of One Nation. You do not pander to snake-oil politics. You do not pander to scapegoating. You listen to legitimate concerns and you act in response. We can respond to the rise of One Nation by working together to form a stronger social fabric built on human connectivity and cultural awareness between our oldest and newest Australians, as countless Australians have done before. We still have boundless plains to share. The return to darkness within our polity and our society can only emerge out of one thing, and the only reason this genie has been let out of the bottle, is the political weakness of our leaders.

Labor have always known what to do in politics: to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves; to give voice to the voiceless. It is embedded in our DNA and we will continue to fight. But I challenge the Prime Minister: join us in fighting this. Stand up to the Hague. Take control of your own party. Follow the model of leadership provided by the conservative leaders of the Hanson era. Look to the example of Senator Ron Boswell. Look to the example of Rob Borbidge. Look, even, to the example of John Howard, who got there in the end after some prodding from Alexander Downer. Do not go down the path of accommodation and encouragement of this kind of snake-law politics. The Labor Party will not. We will draw a line in the sand. My community would expect nothing else.

We see the benefits of diversity. We see the benefits of the nation that we have become. We see the journey that Australia has taken to become the diverse, tolerant, successful nation that we are today. This is a prize, a benefit, that we must go to all lengths to preserve. Labor will provide this leadership at all levels. In Victoria, at least, the coalition opposition is signed on to this approach. We have a saying in Victoria that multiculturalism and support for migration is bipartisan in Victoria. I give the Liberal Party in Victoria credit for that. This is the model that we must pursue. We need to take that bipartisan support. We need to take the leadership in marginalising extremist views and marginalising these views that jeopardise what is most important to our nation. But it starts from the top. It starts with leaders providing guidance on what is acceptable and what is not. We will continue to provide this leadership in the parliament and I call on the Prime Minister to do so too.

See this speech in context