Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I am very happy, Senator Wong, to debate you and to debate Senator Evans on these and other issues any day of the week that you choose, because your record stands as a testament of failure by the government in the management of these issues. That is why the censure component of this motion, its part 1, is commanding the support of the opposition. It is commanding our support because it identifies very clearly failure across a number of programs that this government has sought to implement, a number of programs where this government has got its implementation strategy seriously wrong, and the consequences of its errors in implementing those policies have been devastating. They have been devastating to the budget where hundreds of millions of dollars have been squandered, devastating to the lives of Australians, both families hurt by the mismanagement of programs and businesses hurt by the mismanagement of programs. These programs—the Home Insulation Program, the Green Loans Program, the solar rebate, the remote renewable power generation program and the renewable energy target—all stand out as beacons of failure by the government in their implementation strategy, beacons of failure to deliver on their promises or to deliver on their promises in a manner that actually gets those promises through rather than ending up in absolute disaster. This is a serious motion. It is a censure motion and the opposition considers its support or otherwise as to the censure of the government very seriously.