Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I note a South Australian member is actually interjecting. I'd say that what he should do is interject against his National Party colleagues. The tail, once again, is trying to wag the dog. Of course, with the rise of the member for New England to be Deputy Prime Minister, there's been some discussion about what that means for the way the government will operate and the way this parliament will function. Well, spoiler alert: the Deputy Prime Minister is the spoiler, the great spoiler within the coalition. He is the great divider within the coalition, and we saw it. We saw the National Party have a meeting and, as Senator Canavan said on radio this morning, deliberately not tell their Liberal colleagues what they were going to do, because, as he said, their Liberal colleagues would have pulled the bill. So the National Party is plotting, within the government, against the government of which they are a part. If there's anything that exemplifies the chaos that we've seen this week, it is what occurred in the Senate last night. This has occurred at a time when we have absolute chaos when it comes to the big challenge of this country.

Yesterday we heard the Prime Minister—the virtual Prime Minister on the screen over there—acknowledge that he had just two jobs. Well, he did have two jobs. He had the job of the rollout of the vaccine and fixing national quarantine. That should have been the priority, but what have we had this week? We've had a plot against the former Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Riverina, on the basis of no argument that he's done anything wrong—no argument at all. They've queued up to say what a decent bloke he is. Between putting a spear in between the third and fourth ribs of the former Deputy Prime Minister, they've queued up to say what a good bloke he is and then gave him a standing ovation as he walked out the door. Well, the current Deputy Prime Minister didn't get a standing ovation when he had to resign in disgrace the last time he had the job, and he won't get a standing ovation from them the next time he has to leave, because his whole record in office is one of chaos.

What we saw last night in the Senate was chaos—government members moving amendments to their own legislation and then being rejected and then going out there on radio this morning spruiking as to why it was the case. We know that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is absolutely critical. As a former water shadow minister, I know exactly why this critical plan for Australia's food bowl as well as for the use of water in this country—particularly for the end users down the bottom there in South Australia—is absolutely critical to access to clean water. But what we have from this government is absolute chaos, and we've got Liberal Party members from South Australia defending this. (Time expired)

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