Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the election, the Prime Minister said: 'Only the Coalition can be trusted when we say there will be no deals with the Greens. No deals with flaky Independents, no deals whatsoever.' Given the Prime Minister has now done dirty deals with the Greens on the debt ceiling and slashing part pensions, how can Australians believe a single word this Prime Minister says?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a little surprised that the Leader of the Opposition should choose to start question time today talking about trust, given what we were told on The Killing Season last night. We all know that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard was advised—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order on direct relevance. If we are going to get that segue on every question it will be a very boring question time.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One after another the guilty men get to their feet, trying to defend the guilty party. The former Prime Minister was advised 'you couldn't trust Bill Shorten and he would do Julia in', and that is exactly what happened. It is typical, I fear, of the Leader of the Opposition that he would verbal others in the way that he has just sought to verbal me. As everyone knows, the quote in question was in reference to the formation of a minority government. I was speaking about the formation of a minority government. I said that when it came to the formation of a minority government after the 2013 election there would be no deals with the Greens, no deals with independents and no deals with anyone to form a minority coalition government. We all know what happened the last time someone did a deal with the Greens to form a minority government. That is exactly what the Labor Party did. They did a sordid deal with the Greens to form a minority government. And what did that give us? It gave us the carbon tax, it gave us chaos on our borders and it gave us the absolute disaster of that term from 2010 to 2013 about which we are learning so much, courtesy of the ABC. I want to say publicly thank you to the ABC. I do not normally say thank you to the ABC but I have to say Australia is indebted to you in this instance.