Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister of Australia is an economic failure. He was the last person in Australia to learn that a health strategy in the middle of a pandemic is an economic policy. He is the root cause of the pandemic and lockdown misery that is ripping its way through eastern Australia. His negligence is costing Australia and the Australian economy $3.2 billion every week. That's $19 million every hour. The nation is divided, and he is the cause of it. Western Sydney is at a flashpoint right now—divisions, small businesses on their knees, the health system in crisis. In my electorate and in the Illawarra, according to Regional Development Australia, we have lost 10,400 jobs through this latest wave of COVID-19. Our unemployment rate is estimated to be 12.4 per cent. Small businesses are in real trouble. They aren't getting JobKeeper, and JobSaver payments simply aren't coming through. With insufficient support for small businesses, they are closing their doors.

The Prime Minister's answer to this bin fire that he has started in New South Wales and Victoria is to pick a fight with the two big states that aren't actually in lockdown. Can you imagine what the people in Western Australia are thinking today? Yesterday it was announced that they're getting the AFL grand final, a big economic boost to that state. But, at the very same time, the Prime Minister, who makes a habit of protecting the Neanderthals on his own backbench, is comparing Western Australians to cave dwellers. In Queensland, today and tomorrow and the next day, kids are going home from school in the normal fashion. On the weekend they'll be participating in school sport. In the evening they'll be going to a restaurant or a club. They'll be going to a pub. On Sunday they'll be going to church and they'll be going to places of worship. But this Prime Minister's answer to the bin fire that's going on in New South Wales and has spread to Victoria is somehow to blame the people and the premiers of Queensland and Western Australia who are quite rightly trying to protect the public health and the small businesses in those states. He is the bloke who starts the bushfire and then starts telling the people who are trying to put the bushfire out to put down the hose. If this Prime Minister wants to know what a dangerous and ignorant cave dweller looks like, he should grab a mirror. Eight long years and no economic plan—

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