Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This Prime Minister stated in the course of the last parliament, right through the election campaign, that he would take debates. He was critical of the previous Prime Minister for not taking suspensions, and somehow this would be a government of transparency, the sunlight would shine in and this Prime Minister would run a new system, a more transparent system. But do you think that has happened today? Again, no, it hasn't. It hasn't happened, because the Prime Minister doesn't want to talk about his role in dividing our nation in a way that no predecessor of his has since Federation.

It's important to point out that the Prime Minister has taken the nation on a $450 million merry-go-round that has resulted in a situation where he raised expectations for Indigenous Australians. He told them that he could deliver an outcome which he never had capacity to deliver. He said to the Australian people that he was going to ask for their support but then refused to provide any of the detail, which, again, is completely and utterly without precedent. What prime minister takes the country to a position of division? What Prime Minister says to the Australian public, 'I have a proposal before you, the biggest change proposed to our nation's rule book, the insertion of a new chapter in the Constitution,' and then doesn't give the detail? There was no constitutional convention where there was a discussion of views, and Greg Craven's piece in the Australian today is constructive. There's been no point in our country's history where a prime minister hasn't sought a bipartisan position in relation to such a totemic issue. There's no precedent for it whatsoever.

The Prime Minister wasn't interested in the unifying moment. The unifying moment, as history now records, would have been to ask Australians whether they supported recognition of Indigenous Australians in our Constitution. The Prime Minister didn't do that. He sought to use the goodwill toward that recognition to mask the unpopularity of the Voice. His plan was to speak in this coded language—and you saw him chopping and changing over the course of the campaign as to what that language was, but essentially his proposition was to try and mask the Voice with constitutional recognition. Why did he do that? Because he knew that the Voice couldn't stand on its own two feet. He knew that he couldn't explain the design of it, because this Prime Minister is never across the detail.

We saw it during the campaign. We've seen it in relation to cost-of-living measures. We've seen it in relation to two budgets now. The Australian public is crying out for support from their Prime Minister, from their government, to help them with cost-of-living pressures, but this Prime Minister has been completely obsessed with the Voice for the last 17 months.

It came as a surprise to Australians on election night when, having had no real discussion in the course of the last election campaign, the Prime Minister announced that this would be his highest priority. So, instinctively, at the start, Australians of goodwill said, 'Okay, well, do we want to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians, particularly in regional and remote areas? Of course we do. So we support the Prime Minister's proposition. We take it at face value, in good faith'—expecting that the detail was going to be provided, expecting that there would be an understanding of how these practical outcomes could be delivered. But, instead, none of it was furnished. In fact, had there been success in the referendum on the weekend, had the 'yes' vote prevailed, the design process was due to have started this Monday. Now, I don't know whether they've leased office space. I don't know whether people have been employed. I don't know whether design architects have been engaged by the Commonwealth. But think about that proposition for a moment, because I think the Australian people thought about it over the course of this campaign. They were being asked to vote on the Saturday for something that was to be designed the following Monday.

The whole concept of cart and horse comes to mind here, but this Prime Minister stuck steadfastly with it. Why? I mean, why was he not able to explain it? Why did the design not start until after the vote had taken place? We know that he hadn't read the full detail. We know that he hadn't engaged properly to understand what it was that was being proposed. Whilst he stood at one point in this chamber waving around the Calma-Langton report—remember that—when we asked him for the details upfront, he said, 'Why don't you read the Calma-Langton report?' As it turns out, he'd never read it, because the Calma-Langton report didn't recommend going to a referendum, the way the Prime Minister did, at a cost of $450 million. The Calma-Langton report recommended that local and regional bodies be formed and provide advice to the government. That wasn't what the Prime Minister adopted. He went against even the advice of those experts that had put the model together.

Why did that expert body consider going to local and regional arrangements before going to a national model, which they'd recommended against? It was because they knew, as he did, that the Australian public wouldn't support it. Noel Pearson himself is on the record as having said this quite prophetically a number of years ago: the Australian public would not support a referendum question put to them that went to a model that hadn't been explained or hadn't been in practice to demonstrate how it could provide the outcomes.

This is no flippant situation that we're dealing with. This is a Prime Minister who made a conscious decision, ultimately searching for his Redfern moment or his apology moment. He wants to be one of the great leaders of the Labor Party. He sees himself as Bob Hawke. He regularly sees himself in the mirror as Bob Hawke. This bloke is no Bob Hawke, let me tell you that much. This bloke is not Bob Hawke. But I'll tell you who he is. Every single day the incompetence displayed by this Prime Minister and his ministers on rising electricity prices, on rising insurance bills, on getting less and less when you turn up to the supermarket for every dollar that you spend, has him looking more and more like his mentor: Kevin Rudd. K-Rudd, A-Albanese—A-Disaster-Albanese.

This Prime Minister is no light on the hill. There's no question about it. This Prime Minister is a fading light, a flickering light on the hill. He is a flake, and he doesn't have the capacity to show the leadership this country deserves. If this Prime Minister was a Hawke figure, if this Prime Minister had any of the capability or capacity of Bob Hawke, he would stand up and take responsibility for the reckless course that he has taken our country on over the course of the last month and a bit.

This country didn't deserve to be divided. Indigenous Australians deserve more from their Prime Minister. They didn't deserve to have their expectations raised unfairly and without any opportunity or likely prospect of success. We stood in this chamber and we advised the Prime Minister respectfully, having asked question after question for the detail, that this would not pass on the vibe. The Prime Minister decided instead to go down a path to divide our country and spend $450 million that could have provided endless support to Indigenous communities, to those kids. This Prime Minister does not deserve the support of the Australian people.

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