Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition leader, who is the first woman to lead the Liberal Party, has been trying to drag them to the centre—where most Australians are—but, instead, the member for Hume says, 'No, it's my turn.' He couldn't even wait a year now. He lined up last night. The whole building was waiting—the journalists were literally starving; people were bringing them food—waiting and waiting and waiting, until out he wandered to the cameras, which had been set up there since after question time. It's getting late in the night. There was dew all over their equipment. They brushed it off, and there he was with all his friends. For those who didn't see the visuals, he was by himself. Honestly, it was like an episode of Utopia. He actually looked like Rob Stitch standing there. He had absolutely nothing to say. There was not a single shred of substance except 'oh, well, people don't like us because the polling is really bad'. Here's a clue—actually have a policy apart from defining yourself by what you're against. All Australians have heard from the opposition is all of the things they oppose. There's not a single shred of a policy that they've managed to put out, and Australians see the division. They're sick of it.

No wonder, when you ask an opinion poll, a snapshot of public opinion at that moment—it's not a predictor of how people will vote at a future election. It's a scream in the dark. It's a cry for help from Australians to say, 'Please, would you do your job as a functioning opposition?' But, if the member for Hume is the answer, it's a pretty dumb question. If the member for Hume is the answer, then God help Australia and God help the Liberal Party. He's Peter Dutton's right-hand man. He was there at every step. Seriously, ask yourselves how on earth that is going to help the predicament that you're in—electing the bloke who is further to the right than Peter Dutton.

But what do his colleagues think of him? As the Treasurer said yesterday, half of them support him and the other half have met him. The most bizarre aspect of this is his truly terrible record. Objectively, if you were interviewing for a job with a key selection criterion and you had the panel out, you would literally pick anyone else. As one of his colleagues said in the paper on the weekend, everything he touches turns to the little brown emoji—we'll say custard in here or Mr Hankey, for those who remember the screensaver back from the nineties. Everything he touches turns to custard.

As shadow Treasurer last term, he had a genius record. This was their policy. He actually went to the election with higher taxes, bigger deficits, scrapping work from home—that went well; that was very popular—sacking tens of thousands of frontline workers and contracting them out to the private sector and labour hire firms and his old mates at McKinsey and the consulting firms (there's how to blow a few billion), and the $600 billion risky nuclear reactor scheme. That was his genius contribution as shadow Treasurer. The shadow defence minister for the last nine months or so—not that anyone would know it. He's literally had nothing to say. His only contribution to public debate on Defence is 'we should spend more'. Okay, shadow minister, what should we spend more on? 'Well, I don't know; we should just spend more.' It's like the brilliant contribution the member for Hastie made at the last election. He was going to buy a squadron of F-35 fighter jets, except there were no pilots, no training, no petrol, no maintenance budget—

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