Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

During the speech that I want to make in taking note of answers given by the government today, you need to be playing, in your head, the soundtrack for The Muppet Showthe one with the little brass band sounding away, where it ends on a discordant note. Well, that's the soundtrack for this government. I used to watch The Muppet Show,and you'd only get one instalment a week. But this government is overdelivering; we're getting episodes every single day! So have the Muppet Show track playing in your head while this government is wreaking havoc, is causing chaos and is absolutely not being at all stable. We've got Prime Minister Morrison out there saying: 'Vote for Dave Sharma. Send another Liberal down here so we can continue stable government.' Let's have a look at what 'stable government' actually looked like this week.

On Tuesday, just five days before the by-election in the seat of Wentworth, which has a very large Jewish population, we had the Prime Minister say that he is going to consider up-ending 70 years of bipartisan agreement about Jerusalem. Would you believe that that is a stable government in action? It certainly didn't look really stable when we started hearing about the flurry of calls, particularly from our nearest neighbour, with a huge population, expressing considerable concern about this—the government's latest play for a few votes in Wentworth, which is supposed to be one of its safest seats. And why is it not one of their safest seats anymore? It's because they have abused the opportunity of government; they have played games with the Australian people, with our economy and our foreign policy; and they sacrificed their own Prime Minister, who was the member for that seat of Wentworth. They've caused the chaos. In the midst of that chaos, the report at the moment is that the government has spent $1.2 million stuffing the letterboxes of Wentworth with a whole lot of information, because this stable government, as it tells us it is, is fighting for its life in Wentworth. Electing Dave Sharma to send him to Canberra is not going to fix what's wrong with this government—anyone but Dave Sharma, and, preferably, our great Labor candidate, Tim Murray. He'd make a much better contribution, and I know that he'd be bringing stability in foreign policy as part of the Labor Party's conversation.

In addition to the chaos that we've seen this week, where the government have decided to play out whether they'll support foreign policy in the national interest or act in their own personal interest, we've seen that battle land on the side of the Liberal Party, against Australia's national interest.

We've also had the backflip on the GST. The GST is a pretty important policy for Australia. We've had a series of declarations from this government in the negotiations with the states—so the scale of this is quite significant—saying there would be no top-ups. Labor said that Western Australia needed its fair share of funding. We had Minister Morrison, now PM, say, 'Top-ups should not be a thing,' and suddenly this week he decided to change his mind. This is the kind of instability and uncertainty that our nation is faced with.

They've changed leaders. We had Abbott. We had Turnbull. We've got Morrison. With Morrison we are seeing this massive shift and uncertainty every single day. This is not a stable government. We made a commitment. When Labor said that the commitment to ensure that no state is worse off should be enshrined in law, around our GST, the Liberal Party just laughed at it. They said that there was no way that that should be agreed to and that they wouldn't even consider it until 2026.

What has happened this week is a situation that Labor welcomes, because we have had five years of stable leadership under Bill Shorten. We've been working hard on policies for the benefit of this nation. We remain committed to the international rule of law and stable foreign policy that is in our national interest and upholds our responsibility as a good international citizen. We would never play with the Jewish vote in Wentworth, as this Prime Minister and his team have currently undertaken in the seat of Wentworth for Saturday. The people of Wentworth should not reward this unstable government. Sending Dave Sharma will not fix it— (Time expired)