John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Have you finished?

Senator Wong interjecting—

What did I do to Gillard? I didn't do anything, quoting you, Senator Wong. What did your side do to Prime Minister Gillard? That's the question you should be asking, Senator Wong. You're the ones that sacked her. As I said, we are going back to 2006 newspaper quotes. I'm not going to pick up a paper and look for a quote on Bob Hawke when he was on the grog some time as a university student. Good luck to him. I probably did the same myself except I didn't spend a long time at university. This is grubby politics. The now Prime Minister was a private citizen working before he joined politics. We have even seen attacks on his preselection. I could talk about a lot of preselections in here of those opposite, where the knives come out, the deals are done, and the factions get together and come to some sort of arrangement. We know all about them. We could go back to 2013 and the Senate positions on the paper, couldn't we, Senator Wong? Things like that.

This is just grubby politics. I'm not going to go back into the past. It's not for me to judge the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, or former leaders in this country. Question time is just a farce of throwing hand grenades. Probably the quote of question time today was Senator Cameron when he said, 'Those in the bush have never had it so good.' I find that an amazing interjection, highlighted by Senator O'Sullivan. Just yesterday I came in from Parkes in the Central West. I was talking to my friends Barry and Cheryl Green and Bull Green and his wife Therese. They're carting water, filling the dams up on their properties for sheep water because they don't have underground water in that region. And Senator Cameron says during question time, 'The bush has never had it so good.' That is an amazing statement—so out of touch. It just goes to prove that those opposite spend little time in the bush, seeing the drought, the effect on the people, the animals, the mental effect on humans. Sadly some have taken their own lives due to the stress of this drought. We find in question time comments that the bush has never seen it so good. It's simply amazing.

We were talking about the past of the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, and how those opposite are so squeaky clean with the past. There are things like the laws on superannuation. We can't get changes to them. We have Senator McAllister saying what happened in the preselection of Mr Morrison. Isn't that the business of the Liberal Party, just like the Labor Party does preselection? It's their business how they work their factions and agreements out and so on.

As far as Mr Morrison goes and his job at Tourism Australia, I was happy to speak with the former Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, a few weeks ago at Sydney Airport. He is a good man. He is having a few battles of his own personally. I wish him well with those struggles he's having now with some health issues. He has been a great leader of the National Party and a great Deputy Prime Minister. He is a very decent and honest man. He backed Scott Morrison in that position as managing director, and so did the industry. Here we are today playing politics again in question time and taking note, really to achieve nothing but to try and smear the Prime Minister, who is out there amongst the people working hard, communicating with them. Then we get the thing about the food grants and support; there has been no cut in that. There's an extra $4.5 million, but that wasn't discussed, of course—just one political point taken about that. Really, what is question time about? What is taking note about? It's about political points and simply wasting time.