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]]>In his maiden speech, the member for Cook predominantly spoke about three issues: family, faith and the Australian vision. He also spoke about a fourth, which he spent a lot of time on today, which is forgiveness. There's a consistency in Scott Morrison that we saw 16 years ago, and that was evidenced again today. I think that's really what has been at the heart of Scott's continued success as a leader, as a prime minister, as a local member, as a father and as a husband. He has endeared himself to many colleagues over the course of his journey for that very reason.
Scott was quite modest in his speech today, but we can go back through some of his significant achievements, not just as Prime Minister but as immigration minister and as Treasurer. He retained the AAA credit rating, presided over a series of decisions which were tough decisions but ultimately in the country's best interests and delivered us back to a balanced budget position after a fairly precarious inherited position. He made decisions that ultimately, although not known at the time, put our country in the best possible position to deal with the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were many of us who worked closely with Prime Minister Morrison at that time, and it was confronting, certainly from where I sat.
There were the initial briefings that we received from the Chief of the Defence Force, from the Chief Medical Officer and from the experts otherwise and there was the intelligence that we were receiving from Europe and about what was happening in North America and elsewhere. As the Prime Minister rightly pointed out, the decisions that Scott was able to take really steered us through a very difficult course and put our country onto a path that we should be very proud of. They were decisions in relation to the health portfolio, and the former Prime Minister rightly acknowledged Greg Hunt for the work that he did in literally saving lives. There are many things that you can hang your hat on after a 16-year career, but having had the leading role in saving tens of thousands of lives of fellow Australians who would not have survived otherwise has to be at the top of the tree. As Scott pointed out, they were not just lives but livelihoods.
To this very day, whenever we move around and speak to individual business owners or employees, countless people across the country cite the fact that their business would not have survived. There are 700,000 of them and over a million employees, a million Australians, who ultimately would not have been in the position that they were without the decisions taken by Prime Minister Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and others who sat around that National Security Committee decision-making body. That is one hell of a legacy.
But it didn't stop there. I think Prime Minister Morrison's crowning achievement has been the AUKUS deal that was struck between the United States and the United Kingdom. I can tell you it was no easy feat. The Americans had only shared their closest held secrets with the Brits in the 1950s, and, despite numerous requests from very close allies during the intervening period, they had not decided to share that secret and have that confidence in another leader up until their interaction with Prime Minister Morrison. It will be the underpinning of our security for decades to come in a very uncertain world. Scott Morrison has that as part of his legacy.
It doesn't stop there. Scott was able to bring Japan and India together in the QUAD and form a very close relationship, as he said, with the then Japanese Prime Minister, who was tragically lost, but also Prime Minister Modi as well. They had a mutual respect for each other and they knew that it was in the best interests of our respective countries, but collectively, to be able to come together to provide support for each other, not just now but into the decades ahead. Again, that was a very significant achievement.
I think it's true to say that the Prime Minister, as he then was, stood up immediately in a way that not many other world leaders did in relation to Ukraine. One of my proudest moments in this place, Scott, was seeing the decisions that you swiftly took to provide support to people, which ultimately went to your values of faith and family and your vision, particularly in relation to humanity. The decisions that you took and that we took in government supported the people of Ukraine and the bravery of President Zelenskyy and ultimately resulted in saving the lives of men, women and children to this very day.
You spoke very passionately about the rise and the unacceptable incidents of antisemitism that we see in our country today. It is endemic and it is shameful. You had the courage to stand up, consistent with your long-held values, to call that out, to be a friend of Israel and to provide support to people, who, on 7 October, had suffered the most horrific attack since the Holocaust, when six million people were gassed. You stand as a world leader, as a result of all of that combined, that we can be very proud of.
I want to say thank you, on a personal level. We did have an exchange in 2018, as I recall, but when we came out of the meeting that day you were gracious enough to extend the hand of friendship to me, and I pledged to you on that day that I would serve you loyally. Together, since that day, I think we've been able to bring our party together in a way that wasn't possible for the period after 2007. I'm very grateful that that friendship continues today and long into the future. I wish you every success that you deserve into the future. I wish Jenny and the girls every success. The two beautiful young adults we see today, Abbey and Lily, were little girls, and we watched them grow up. They might watch the footage now and think, 'Why did I wear that? Why did I say that? Why was my hair cut like that?' as my kids often do. You have so much to be proud of.
In this place, as the Prime Minister rightly points out, family is often forgotten. There will be a lot of cynicism in some of the reporting of Scott's speech, with its references to his faith and to his God. In this age of inclusion those people, who would normally parrot the fact that we need to be more inclusive and that our society needs to be more tolerant, will be the people who scribe tomorrow in a cynical way the words that Scott—in a very heartfelt way—conveyed to us today. There's a significant amount of irony in that. It's not going to change. That's the reality of the world in which we live.
For Abbey and Lily, they know that they've been born into an amazing family, and Jenny is central to all of that. She's been graceful, she has been supportive, she's been generous and the country saw in her—at that time and since—somebody with a very big heart and somebody who loved her husband very dearly. So I want to say to the Morrison family, thank you for sacrifice and thank you very much for the contribution that you have given to our country. To Mrs Marion Morrison today and, in his absence, to John, thank you very much for the values you've instilled even to the current generation. The legacy that you have presided over is significant in itself.
My closing words are to Abbey and Lily. Thank you very much for facilitating that daggy dad moment, as well, where your father went through, at your wish, to detail the Taylor Swift songs. He got away with it and it shows the influence that you have on his life, which is a very special thing.
We wish him every success and good fortune and good health into the future. He has served our country with great distinction and we honour him today as a leader of our party and as a leader of our great country.
]]>Do you know why there are no papers before the government? He knows that there is a report that the government is holding back because the Dunkley by-election is on 2 March. I suspect that on 3 March there may well be some papers before the government which talk about whether or not the family home will be taken into consideration to try to exclude some Australians from access to aged-care support as they age in this country.
What it quite ably shows is that this Prime Minister is prepared to do or say anything. Before the election he looked the Australian public in the eye and said on 97 occasions: 'We know that you're hurting. We know that the cost-of-living pressures are mounting and that you want support. I'm here. I'm Albo. I'm here to support you.' He promised on 97 occasions that $275 would be the amount that your power bills would be reduced by. He didn't say that it was a one-off occurrence. He didn't say that, over the course of the three years, you'd get a $275 reduction in your power bill. It was each and every year.
As I move around the country, I have the great honour of meeting literally thousands of Australians in the cities, suburbs and regional towns of every state and territory. At a time when this Prime Minister says that his word is his bond and that he can be trusted, I cannot find one person in this country who has received a $275 reduction in their power bill. How can he be trusted when he's never mentioned the figure of $275 since the election?
He said one thing to one audience before the election. He got elected. Australians reasonably believed that he would deliver on his word. Having made the promise on 97 occasions, he has never mentioned it. Somehow it's slipped his mind that he promised the Australian public that he would give this support to them and to their families, and he's completely and utterly backtracked on that commitment.
It shows that this Prime Minister can't be trusted. It shows that he leads an incompetent government. It shows that he is a weak leader, at a time when our country needs a strong leader to make the decisions not just for today but for tomorrow as well. So, it is the case that this Prime Minister has breached the trust of the Australian people. How can he go around the country looking people in the eye and on 100 occasions promising he would support them with tax cuts and then turn around and say he will not provide those tax cuts to Australians? We know that the government, over the course of the next decade, will reap about $28 billion worth of extra tax revenue as a result of what the Prime Minister has now promised.
Now, we support tax cuts for all Australians. When we were in government we supported stage 1 and stage 2. Stage 3—here's a tip for the Prime Minister—wasn't the start of tax cuts for Australians. Do you know what gave it away? It's No. 3, right? So, there was a stage 1 and a stage 2. When we were in government we legislated tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes. There was $200 billion worth of tax cut support to people on low and middle incomes. We put in place the low and middle income tax offset so that people, at a time when they were feeling pressure, would be able to receive those additional dollars in their pockets, because they worked for it. They worked hard for it. And the harder they work, the more of their money they should keep—but not under this government's approach, not for this Prime Minister.
This incompetent Prime Minister, this incompetent government, have gone about their business in a way that's actually harmed Australians. They've now had two budgets, where they know that inflation is a problem. As the Reserve Bank governor points out, it's a problem not just of the international factors—of what we've seen in the Middle East, of what we've seen elsewhere, in Ukraine. It's home grown, which is why core inflation in this country is higher than in the other G7 nations—comparable economies that have seen a reduction in their inflation rates and therefore their interest rates. It's higher here, because Labor can't manage the economy. Labor have made decisions in two subsequent budgets, where Australians reasonably thought they would see support to help them get through.
But what has happened is that this Prime Minister has presided over economic decisions that clearly have made it harder for Australians—those Australians in Dunkley, who at the moment, in places like Frankston, are really doing it tough on this Prime Minister's watch. They believed he was on their side, but they can't trust him anymore. They know that the tax cuts he's now implementing don't start until 1 July. He forgets to tell them that in the literature he puts into the Dunkley electorate. They're not getting that support until July. And when they look at what they are being told by the Prime Minister—that this is job done, that victory is declared, and here's your $15 a week—people are paying $24,000 a year more for their mortgage, in after-tax dollars. That's $40,000 gross. You're talking about $800 a week of gross income that they need to find to break even just on their mortgage repayments under this government.
The very willing participant in public debate at the moment sitting opposite me here, our good friend the member for Shortland, will be there tomorrow morning on the Today show with me, because his good friend the member for Corio—once he leaves here nobody sees him again; he goes MIA.
In the 2019 election the then Leader of the Opposition was there promising tax cuts and promising tax changes and, as it turns out, it wasn't that productive for him. I hope the current Prime Minister learns the lesson, because taxes on the family home, which is what this government is considering, as well as changes to negative gearing and a ute tax, a car tax, at a time when families are suffering, and taxing families when they want to go into aged care, which is an effective death tax, is not what they voted for.
The most recent example of this government's incompetence, the most recent example of the break of trust with the Australian people, is in relation to the release of these 149 individuals. I take very seriously the responsibility that we all have in this place, and I know all my colleagues do. We speak to victims of crime every day. People who work hard, many older Australians who've worked all their lives and paid taxes, want to be safe in their own homes, and many of them don't feel safe at the moment. The government promised that they would keep Australians safe, that they would implement and adopt policies that would go to providing a safer society. Instead, they took a decision to release 149 people, hardened criminals. Seven murderers, people who had committed rape and paedophilia, people who had committed domestic violence and other serious crimes—they released those people into the Australian community.
And have they committed crimes since they've been released? Yes, they have. Yet this incompetent minister comes in here and says that he promises—
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