House debates

Thursday, 6 December 2018

Statements by Members

Prime Minister

1:56 pm

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | | Hansard source

What we have now is a scheming, plotting Prime Minister who came up through the middle after Mr Dutton failed to become Prime Minister. They axed Mr Turnbull, and what we've got is an accidental, scheming Prime Minister who can't stand the heat in this parliament and can't stand the heat in the electorate. How do we know this? We know he doesn't go very well in the electorate. We look at Longman and Braddon, those by-elections they were supposed to do so well in. We look at Wentworth, which they catastrophically lost. We look at what Mr Phil Coorey said about the bus tour through Queensland:

Whether it was the baseball caps, the forced Aussie vernacular, drinking cans at the Caloundra races, or the daggy YouTube videos, people understood what the Prime Minister was trying to do but were worried about the execution.

Too right they were worried about the execution! That's because it was hopeless—absolutely hopeless. What we've got is a Prime Minister who can't win in the electorate and is called out as the fraud he is in the electorate, and guess what: he can't win in this parliament either. The first couple of days he spent dealing with Turnbull. Then he rushed through rules changes. Then he put in a half-baked energy bill. Then we had partisanship on national security. Now we all know he faces losing the confidence of this House. (Time expired)