Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

The proposition before the chamber today is to reflect upon the first hundred days of the new Turnbull government since the last election.

This is an interesting concept for us to consider given the government's fortunes have fallen so dramatically even after their crushing electoral fiasco that we saw in July. We know that this is a Prime Minister who has been very keen to tell us ad nauseam that we live in the 'most exciting times'. Do you remember that? These are the 'most exciting times' this country has ever seen. These are the most agile times this country has ever seen—times in which we should be brimming with confidence. The unfortunate fact of life is that the electorate, the public, the Australian people do not feel very excited about this government. They do not feel that is a very agile government. They do not think that this is a government that has many opportunities before it. What we have seen is that this is a government that is weak, it is directionless and it is in fact captive of the most extreme right-wing elements of the coalition in this country.

We know that a coalition of town and country capital in this parliament over the years has enjoyed quite a wide range of opinions and differences, as you would expect in a great political organisation like the coalition has been since Menzies created it in the late forties. But never have we seen a period of government dominated by the IPA and the allies of the most extreme right-wing, quasi-fascist organisations in this country. Even the once great National Party has fallen into this. They are now pandering to One Nation. Isn't that an extraordinary proposition? Do you remember Ron Boswell? He used to stand up to One Nation because he understood the consequences of pandering to these extreme right-wing, racist and xenophobic views, but what we see, of course, under this coalition is that anything goes. Why has that happened? It is because this is a government that has lost its authority. It has lost its legitimacy. It has lost its sense of direction. This is a Prime Minister who just over a year ago was elected by the Liberal Party 54 votes to—was it 44? Remember, in the polls at that time, there was the sense that they could roll all before them. Now what has happened? There has been a disastrous election result and a disastrous political strategy to adopt changes to the Senate, aided and abetted by the Greens—I accept that. This is a reasonable criticism to make. We have seen an election result in which this government effectively lost its majority, a Senate transformed and a government now obliged to follow a much more conservative direction. Some people might think that is great. But that is not what this Prime Minister made his name for, is it? Throughout his time in public life—and this is why I think so many people had such hopes for him last year—he has presented himself as a progressive, a person who is actually interested in the Enlightenment! For many people on the other side of this chamber, the Enlightenment is a very dangerous thing. In fact, they are having a lot of trouble even catching up with the very principle of it. We have met many of them in the past for whom the reading of books, for instance, was something they frowned upon! But now we have circumstances where those from the Dark Ages have come to dominate this government.