Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Sturt moving immediately:

That the Prime Minister be called on immediately to give a full explanation to the House about the circumstances involving her office and the representatives of the Tent Embassy protesters that led to the disturbance at The Lobby Restaurant on Australia Day and, in particular, to answer the charge that a culture of dirty tricks exists in her office preventing her office from addressing the serious policy issues besetting the nation at this time.

Australians instinctively want to believe the best about their Prime Minister but whilst so many questions remain unanswered about the role of her office in the Australia Day riots the Australian people cannot help but question the credibility of this Prime Minister. Standing orders need to be suspended to allow this motion to be debated and agreed to so the Prime Minister can do the right thing: give a full explanation to the House and dispel the notion that is abroad in this country that the office elevates dirty tricks above addressing the policy challenges that beset the nation.

We know that this Prime Minister would walk on a million corpses to become a cabinet minister. She told us this herself. We know she would dispatch a Prime Minister of her own party to gain the office of Prime Minister. We know she would tell the Australian people one thing to win an election and then do the opposite immediately after an election to stay in power. We know she would dispatch a Speaker to gain an extra vote in this chamber. We know she would dispatch a friend and cabinet colleague in Senator Kim Carr to keep the faceless men of the caucus happy. We know she would tear up her contract with the member for Denison to keep the foreign minister at bay. Comparing her to Lady Macbeth is unfair on Lady Macbeth—she only had one victim to her name; this Prime Minister has a list of victims longer than Richard III.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Sturt no longer has the call.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: the Manager of Opposition Business is being disorderly and he should withdraw.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would be enormously helpful to the House if the Manager of Opposition Business withdrew the imputation that he just articulated.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. But surely this Prime Minister would draw the line at allowing her office, the office of Prime Minister, to become tainted by the suggestion that it is engaged in black operations to damage the Leader of the Opposition. The Australia Day riot was no idle matter. It was the most serious breach of a Prime Minister's security since the Fraser government. No-one enjoyed seeing the Prime Minister in a headlock, dragged downstairs and along a path, chased by an angry mob, shoved in the back of a car and losing a shoe in the process. Nobody enjoyed that. It was shocking, it was terrible and it was humiliating both for the Prime Minister and for Australia as these images were flashed around the world.

If anyone should want to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding this unfortunate event, it should be the Prime Minister. If anybody should want to get rid of the lingering stench that hangs over this government because of the actions of her staff on Australia Day, it should be the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister is to have any credibility in the future, she should want to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding the most serious security breach to a Prime Minister since the Fraser government. And yet it took the opposition to refer this matter to the Australian Federal Police, having given the Prime Minister four days in which to do the right thing and refer it to them. In the teeth of inaction on the Prime Minister's part, the opposition acted.

Too many questions remain unanswered about this matter for it to simply go away. Let me go through them. What precisely did the Prime Minister's staff say to Kim Sattler on Australia Day that would have led her to instigate the subsequent events? If the Prime Minister expects us to believe that her staff relayed Mr Abbott's words exactly, why did Kim Sattler write on Facebook and in an email to 3AW that Mr Abbott had suggested the tent embassy be cleared? Did Mr Hodges speak to any other activists?

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Sturt will refer to the Leader of the Opposition by his title.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will. Did Mr Hodges speak to any other activists or protesters on Australia Day in relation to the events that were unfolding at the Lobby restaurant? If so, to whom? What was the content of those conversations? Why were the Prime Minister's media advisers telling press gallery journalists on Thursday afternoon that the Leader of the Opposition had started a riot if they were not trying to gain political mileage from the events of Australia Day? Who were those staff members? Has any action been taken in her office in relation to those staff? Who were the other three prime ministerial office staff at the Lobby on Thursday when Mr Hodges was communicating with Kim Sattler of Unions ACT at the tent embassy protest? Have they been questioned as to their involvement in the events of the day? Can she guarantee that no other staff were involved in the events that led to the Australia Day affray?

What conversations occurred between her head of communications, John McTernan, and Kim Sattler on Friday, Saturday and Sunday? What was the content of those conversations that would lead Kim Sattler to describe herself as being the meat in the sandwich? Did any conversations occur between the Prime Minister's office and Kim Sattler on Sunday that would cause her to alter her account of her interaction with the Prime Minister's staff from the one she gave News Ltd papers on Saturday and upon which the Prime Minister relied today, conveniently forgetting the statement she had made on Saturday to the News Ltd press?

Did Mr Hodges, when passing on the comments of the Leader of the Opposition, make any mention of his remarks in his historic apology in 2008 or the proposal for recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution? When Mr Hodges informed his immediate superiors on Australia Day of his phone calls to the office of the ACT minister for Indigenous affairs and Ms Sattler, who else was subsequently told about the events? Who in turn did they tell? Why was the Prime Minister not told for close to 24 hours? Once informed on Friday afternoon, why did the Prime Minister not immediately tell the public rather than wait until after 6.00 pm that night, conveniently outside the media cycle? Was Mr Hodges required to sign a confidentiality agreement or an agreement of nondisclosure upon his resignation from the Prime Minister's office? When initially making contact with the office of Chris Bourke, the ACT Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, to whom did Mr Hodges speak? What was the content of that conversation? During that conversation, was the suggestion made that Mr Hodges speak to anyone else? Who made that suggestion?

Has anyone in the Prime Minister's office spoken to senior AFP figures in relation to the events of Australia Day? Given the gravity of the Australia Day protests, has the Prime Minister or her chief of staff initiated a review of their internal processes? To whom did Prime Minister's staffers Sean Kelly and John McTernan speak once they were informed of events by Mr Hodges on Thursday? While working to establish the facts, did they speak to anyone else in the Prime Minister's office or other ministerial offices or to other Labor or union figures? When did Mr Kelly or Mr McTernan inform Mr Ben Hubbard of the matters raised with them by Mr Hodges? What instructions did any member of the Prime Minister's office convey to Labor members of parliament on Australia Day about the use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, about the events that had occurred? Of course, the final question is: where is Mr Hodges? Is he in a witness protection program? He has gone to ground. We have not seen him since his resignation, yet he was very prepared to be upfront on Australia Day.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been reluctant, but this is a suspension of standing orders. There are limits to what he can talk about in terms of why the suspension should be supported. Going to character assassination of a former staff member is too much.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member should focus on why standing orders ought to be suspended. However, former staff members are not extended the protection of the standing orders.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Standing orders should be suspended because, as Shakespeare also wrote, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. There is something very rotten in the Prime Minister's office, and these questions remain unanswered. While the Prime Minister refuses to answer these questions, a rotten stench lingers over the Prime Minister and her office that saps the very confidence of the Australian people in the office of the Prime Minister and those who work for her. That is why this suspension should be agreed to and why this motion should be debated and carried. Of all people, the Prime Minister should want to pass this motion. She should want to debate this motion and have it pass through the parliament so that a full explanation can be given of her role in the events on Australia Day that have cast such a shadow over her office and her prime ministership.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. Standing orders must be set aside to require this Prime Minister to stand to account for the rotten culture that has overtaken her government and which would be the subject of the debate that would follow the motion. There is a stench about this government that grows stronger every single day. It is the smell of distrust, the smell of division, the smell of disloyalty and the smell of incompetence, arrogance, dirty tricks and cover-up. Above all, it is the smell of the decay that is eating into the very fabric of this government and that is affecting its very culture under the leadership of this Prime Minister. The events of Australia Day and the appalling and irresponsible conduct of the Prime Minister's office in the cover-up that followed are a window into the soul of this Prime Minister's government, of her office and of the culture that she has allowed to be created. What a dark place that is.

The events of that day betray the culture of this Prime Minister and the culture she has allowed to overtake her government. The Prime Minister seems to believe in spontaneous incitement, based on things she has said in this place. She fails to understand that on that day her office compromised the security of our national leaders for nothing other than to make a cheap political point.

The smell of this government is a very familiar one. We smell it in Queensland—it is in the air there—and I remember it all too well as the smell of the squalid Labor government in New South Wales. The culture of that government now infects this government here. The same dirty tricks, the same culture, the same responsibilities that are flouted daily and the same culture of cover-up. We remember that it was the New South Wales government just months out from an election that had parliament prorogued in order to ensure that there was not a parliamentary inquiry into the electricity sell-off in New South Wales. That is the culture of Sussex Street when it goes to Macquarie Street. Sussex Street came to this place with the election of the Rudd government and has been taken to supersize under this Prime Minister. We have to remember that it was the former New South Wales Premier who pump-primed her own discretionary budget tenfold in the final year leading up to the election. We all remember the 'Don't you know who I am?' culture of the former member for Robertson and certainly former minister in New South Wales, Minister Della Bosca. We also remember the underpant dancing of the New South Wales state government—I suppose that is something for us to look forward to from the culture that is infecting this government on a daily basis—the rorts that took place in New South Wales, the referrals to ICAC, the corruption following from this culture. The culture starts, the action follows and the rest becomes history.

This was a government that thought it could get away with anything. That is what the Prime Minister's office thought on Australia Day: they apparently refused, according to the Prime Minister's word, to inform the Prime Minister. So the next day when she was interviewed she knew nothing. She stood there and took a swing at Ray Hadley on 2GB, as she would do on any other occasion when she had the opportunity—blame the media, blame everybody else, blame Tony Abbott. She will find someone to blame: 'It certainly wasn't me.' So this Prime Minister went through this process that has become all too familiar. She distances herself, she denies the things that have taken place and she singles out those who are then cut loose to touch the void, as is so common when this government, using the Sussex Street tactics, takes over.

I think there are two certainties in Australian politics. One is that Labor governments invariably go out in disgrace. The other is that coalition governments are invariably elected to clean up the mess. We need to debate this motion because we need to clean the air. We need to clean it of the stench that rises out of this government on a daily basis, whether it is their disloyalty, their distrust of one another, their breaking of promises or this bizarre episode we saw over Australia Day which was apparently a spontaneous incitement. This is a government that needs to stand to account. This is a government that refuses to take responsibility, just as we saw in New South Wales. As New South Wales went, so this government will go—and so it shall deservedly go.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about why this motion to suspend standing and sessional orders should not be agreed to, and I remind the House what this motion is about. It is about giving priority to parliamentary time. We say something to this nation about how we use our time in this parliament. We say something about what drives us, we say something about what we stand for and we say something about what we care about in how we use the time of this parliament. In that regard, I note that the time we are taking now is time that would normally go to the debate on a matter of public importance. And I note that today's matter of public importance, from the member for Lyne, is about the natural disaster relief payments for flood damage in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland and the assistance being made available urgently by governments. I do wonder what Australians looking at this chamber would be thinking about when they see members of the opposition—but not the Leader of the Opposition, because there are some things that are even too grubby for him—coming to the dispatch box with a stream of abuse, holding up debates about important national questions like dealing with flood damage in our nation.

More broadly, it is of no surprise to me that this is the opposition's topic today. They walked into question time today knowing that because of unwise statements by their economic spokespeople their economic strategy, which was always a shambles, has now been revealed as a shambles to the Australian people. They were determined to do anything today to distract from the real debate before our nation—the debate about the economy, about jobs, about running the economy in the interests of working people and getting them a fair share, about making sure that our nation is ready for the future. They knew that if the parliament focused on that today it would devastate them. We came into this parliament today and saw from the opposition inconsistencies everywhere about things that truly matter to our nation's future. The first inconsistency the nation should be focusing on today that matters to the nature's future is the incredible inconsistency across the opposition frontbench over the slashing of benefits to working families and over how many billions of dollars they intend to slash them by.

We have seen the spectacle of the shadow minister for finance on more than one occasion verifying upfront that, yes, they are going to cut $70 billion out of the budget—$70 billion that could only come out of the services that families need. Then we were treated to the spectacle of the shadow Treasurer, who originally adopted that figure and was then on the run from it, denying he had even said it whenever he was asked. Finally, today the shadow Treasurer actually managed to burble out that, yes, he had said that figure but it was a mistake.

I would say to the opposition frontbench that in its plans to cut $70 billion out of services for working families—whether they are plans to slash Medicare, cut the pension or slash family payments—it needs to answer these questions. But they did not want the spotlight on that today. They did not want the spotlight on their inconsistencies about how much of an attack they plan to make on working families if they are ever elected. And then, of course, they walked into this parliament today with a huge inconsistency.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left will remain silent. There is too much audible conversation that I can hear.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition went to the last election campaign talking about one of his most fundamental commitments. The Leader of the Opposition is very fond of making allegations about honesty and election pledges. So what was one of his fundamental commitments during the election campaign? It was to bring the budget back to surplus in 2012-13. In fact, he was going to deliver a bigger surplus than the government would. Where is this fundamental commitment today?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I hesitate to interrupt the Prime Minister, but I was interrupted. For five minutes we have waited for the Prime Minister to address the motion under debate, which is that standing orders should be suspended.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sturt will resume his seat. The Prime Minister has the call.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the House of what the motion is, even if the Manager of Opposition Business does not understand it. In terms of the priority for the order of business of this House, here we have the opposition walking into this parliament in a shambles about one of the things that the Leader of the Opposition described as one of his most fundamental commitments during the election campaign. We now know, courtesy of the shadow minister for finance, backed by the Leader of the Opposition, that if they were elected to government they cannot promise a surplus for the first five years. That is in very stark contrast to this government, that is determined in May to bring a budget into this House that gets us a surplus in 2012-13 exactly as promised, because that is the economic step that our nation needs now.

Then of course these inconsistencies continue. We have seen the shambles across the economic frontbench of the opposition about whether or not there would be tax cuts if they were ever in government. The Leader of the Opposition goes to the National Press Club and basically says: 'You know how I promised tax cuts? Well, I am not really sure anymore. During the first term, I could not possibly say that.' Then they send out the clean-up squad, because they know he has made an error, and the clean-up squad comes out—the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, for example—to say, 'Oh, yes, we will have tax cuts during our first term in government if we are elected.' Then there is some confusion about whether there is one round of tax cuts or two. The opposition is in a shambles.

This would all just be argy-bargy in politics except we are in a situation where what is at the core of our national interest today, at the core of our national interest for the Australian people, is approaches to the economy. Whether you stand for jobs, whether you stand for car industry jobs, the reckless approach of the opposition, even though they are only in opposition, is weighing heavily on the minds of the car industry today. There is the half a billion dollar cutback, there is the lack of certainty for the future and there are 46,000 Australians worried about their jobs because of the statements of the opposition, because of the recklessness of the opposition.

Mrs Mirabella interjecting—

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Indi will remain silent and will cease pointing.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And of course their refusal to put jobs first just goes on and on. We have seen it with the approach to the minerals resource rent tax, where they are determined to take money away from small businesses and other businesses and away from supporting superannuation and give it back to some of the most profitable mining companies on earth. There is the irresponsible approach they are taking to carbon, where they are peddling snake oil and a plan that would cost working families $1,300. There is the irresponsible approach they are taking to the National Broadband Network, with their plan to rip the National Broadband Network out of the ground and deny Australians the technology of the future. And the list goes on and on and on.

Here is the opposition looking for every distraction. Although the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, 'Make my day,' and that he wanted to have a debate about the economy, he knows that if in this chamber we are debating the economy then he will lose, because his economic plan is one of cutbacks for working families, of no support for jobs, of giving benefits to the biggest miners in this country at the expense of other businesses, of the most costly carbon plan and of standing still as we need to build the economy of the future. These are fundamental choices about who you stand with and who you stand for, and of course the Leader of the Opposition never wants to debate them.

We are very clear about who we stand with and who we stand for. We stand for running the economy in the interests of working people and supporting them and their families today, and the opposition frontbench will never stand for those things. They will only ever stand for the privileged interests of a few.

On the question of the matters of Australia Day, I have answered the questions put to me. I would refer the opposition to my transcript. Their muckraking and recklessness and their petty politics do them no good. Get involved in the big debate around this nation—get involved in the debate about jobs, about budget management, about preparing for the future—and if you are not capable of doing that then just come clean and say to the Australian people, 'We don't care about these things,' because that is what your conduct today is reeking of. You care about your petty politics; the national interest just passes you by.

Peter Slipper (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by the honourable member for Sturt be agreed to.