Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think I'm going to give anything away or break any confidences if I say that this has not been a good week for the government! It's not been a good week for the government. We've got a Deputy Prime Minister who normally has a lot to say who's gone missing. He's become more than a little bit sheepish because he's discovered that he's one part Silver Fern and one part Wallaby. If that wasn't bad enough, we have the foreign minister. Anybody watching question time over the last couple of days will have seen that the foreign minister is just one step away from seeing Martians in her kitchen! We've got a former small business minister who appears to have been on the payroll as a lobbyist to lobby himself. Is it any wonder we have backbenchers who are falling over themselves to brief journalists about the woeful tactics that are on display?

So my plea to the government is this: can you please spend the next two weeks getting your house in order. I say to the Prime Minister in particular: can I ask you to get the NBN mess that you have created sorted out. Get the NBN mess sorted out, because back home there are people who are sick of taking a day off from work to get a technician in to turn on the NBN who doesn't turn up. They are sick of paying for services that they aren't getting and they are sick of playing NBN ping-pong. Spend the next two weeks getting your house in order.