Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is right—thank you, Senator Abetz—I beg your pardon: we have burnt houses. We had porous borders. We had multibillion dollar school hall budget blow-outs. We had a range of dysfunction. We had $900 cheques sent to people who lived overseas or sent to those who lived on in eternal heaven—dead people received $900 cheques from the people opposite.

This is an appalling act of hypocrisy from the people opposite, the previous government members, to say that they will not support measures that are intended to rejig our budget to put Australia back on a sustainable fiscal path. It is the ultimate betrayal of the Australian people. It is the same sort of rhetoric in which they maintained, as we heard from Senator Cash, that nothing could be done to stop the people smugglers; nothing could be done to stop the illegal boats from coming here; and nothing could be done to stop the people drowning at sea.

You know what? Nothing could be done, because they were not prepared to do anything. They were the laziest bunch, the most hypocritical bunch of government members, that we have ever seen in the history of this country and now they stand up in sanctimonious piety and say, 'It's not our fault. We haven't done anything.' You have come up short for the Australian people. You have come up short in government and you are coming up even shorter in opposition.

What you have done for this country is reduce politics to a laughing stock. You have reduced it to a joke, because no-one believes anything you say anymore.

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

I notice that Senator Carol Brown is being very vocal over there, but not once during the term of the previous government did she have anything to say about stopping the boats and how important it was. She didn't say anything about the debt and deficit. The only thing that Senator Carol Brown had to say was how bad Senator Polley was while she was trying to get rid of her during preselection.