Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deary me, it's Thursday afternoon, and we know what it's like. It's the end of a sitting period—two weeks. The call goes out from the whip's office or the Leader of the Opposition, saying, 'Can somebody come up with a subject that this opposition can talk about that's a matter of public interest?' They scratch around, looking under every surface, speaking to every shadow minister, who is visionless with any possible policy. They turn around to the shadow minister who has to deal with housing and say, 'Could we do a matter of public importance on housing?' Then someone says, 'Actually, we can't do that, because we're actually proposing a policy that would lead to 42,000 fewer homes being built and housing becoming a shortfall.' Then they scratch around and they say, 'What about if we take concern for senior Australians?' Then they go: 'No, actually we've got another problem. We're going around and raiding people's full tax refunds.' So they can't do that.

Eventually they get to the member for Ballarat, our favourite shadow minister, the shadow minister for health. She says: 'I know. I've got a brilliant idea. Let's do a matter of public importance on this government's five-year record on Medicare.' And they think it's genius, because they start by saying we should be afraid of the campaign they ran at the last election. We all know that at the last election the opposition lied. They lied big time. The opposition lied. And what we have—

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