House debates Matters of Public Importance
Taxation
Josh Burns Macnamara, Australian Labor Party
3:50 pm
Yes, there are a lot of small businesses mining uranium around the world. I'm sure of it. But the Leader of the Opposition seems to have learned his lesson on taxes and not opposing income taxes. But, by golly, these people just keep going back to the same old play. If you remember the previous leader of the opposition—actually, no, the previous previous leader of the opposition, before they rolled Sussan Ley—Peter Dutton came out and announced his nuclear energy policy before the last election and refused to go and visit one of the seven sites that they were proposing to have nuclear energy at any point throughout the election campaign. And what happened when they were leading with nuclear energy as their key election platform? Half the Liberal Party got wiped out, especially in the cities. It's hardly surprising that, when the Leader of the Opposition is lurching to the far right on every single opportunity with deep cuts to migration and chasing Pauline Hanson down the rabbit hole, the Business Council and all of the major business industry groups are saying that the coalition have literally lost their minds.
It's not surprising that we then have the other guy, the former treasurer, out there telling everyone how ready he is to take on the top job. The former treasurer is not bad at getting media. I'll give him that. But there are quite a few people over there that are very, very quietly quite happy for the former treasurer, the former member for Kooyong, to be out there strutting his stuff. I'll read out a couple of quotes of people who were thinking about whether or not Josh Frydenberg could lead the Liberal Party. Senator Kovacic said:
He's been the Treasurer … so that goes without saying, but obviously he's not in the party room now. We have got a leader.
It's not exactly the biggest endorsement of the current leadership. My friend Senator Sharma said:
Angus is our leader and Josh is not in the contest, so I'm backing Angus.
It's very qualified support from Senator Sharma for the Leader of the Opposition. (Time expired)
No comments