Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

After going to the last election promising Australians they would have higher taxes, lower wages and bigger deficits, those opposite have proceeded to tear themselves apart over the last few months. As one of their most senior women, Fiona Scott, has said, 'You don't win elections by threatening to sack the bloke next door.' Whether it's their internal climate wars, their immigration wars or their T-shirt wars, those opposite are less a coalition than a chook shed in a thunderstorm.

We had the coalition split after the election—the comical break-up, which led, briefly, to the opposition leader saying that it would be a frontbench drawn exclusively from the Liberal party room. As one backgrounded a newspaper outlet, they were acting like kids. For a while, the entire 15-member National Party cohort was to be moved away from the Speaker's chair towards the backbench seats, when suddenly they realised that they were making a decision that might affect their hip pockets and decided to reunite.

Then we had Senator Price defecting to the Liberal Party, nearly leaving the Nationals as a nonparty in the Senate. Shortly after, Senator Price was dumped from the coalition shadow ministry, not only because she couldn't back the leader but also for her highly offensive comments about Indian migrants. But she isn't the only one that seems to want to go back on Australia's multicultural success story—a multiculturalism that, as Tim Watts often reminds me, is supported by nine out of 10 Australians. We've had the member for Canning saying that he believed Australians were becoming strangers in their own country due to what he called 'unsustainable' immigration levels. I don't know what he would have made of immigration levels under the coalition, which were 40 per cent higher than they are under us. We've had Senator Canavan telling ABC's Afternoon Briefing that crime is clearly linked with migrant communities in Melbourne. We've seen a shameful attack on migrants from the coalition, which has forced those like Alex Hawke to come out and to finally make the case—

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