Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Cormann to questions today. Senator Cormann's evasions and non-answers in question time today revealed the complete shipwreck that is the Morrison government's energy policy. As Senator Cameron so frequently reminds us, the Morrison government is a total rabble.

We've never seen that more starkly revealed than it was today when we looked at the next iteration of their energy policy—whether it's a big stick, a twig or a branch. Who knows what they're up to at the moment! I think we have to remember that, of course, Mr Morrison is only Prime Minister because the Liberal Party's climate-denialist wing, led by Mr Abbott, the member for Warringah, rebelled against the energy policy of the Turnbull government. It was that rebellion that led to the leadership spill which has made Mr Morrison Prime Minister.

But, of course, we've seen all this before, because, of course, when Mr Turnbull—if I can call him 'Turnbull 1.0'—was first the leader of the Liberal Party, he was undone on climate policy by Mr Abbott. He, of course, took the Liberal Party to the election and he was then himself replaced by Mr Turnbull, who was then himself replaced by Mr Morrison—again, on climate policy.

I know the current Prime Minister likes to compare the Liberal Party to the muppets, but I have another analogy that might be appropriate, and that is that when Mr Turnbull was Turnbull 1.0, he was the strongman at circus. But Turnbull 2.0 was the boneless wonder. But they are none of the things that Menzies wrote about. I happen to know from some of those opposite that they love it when I quote Sir Robert Menzies back to them. I'm actually going to quote the member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson—someone I know well. He quoted Menzies today on Twitter, saying:

… we have won because we have been the party of innovations. Not the party of the past, not the conservative party dying hard on the last barricade, but the party of innovations.

He went on to say:

These were innovations, these were evidences of a lively mind and a forward-looking heart.

I'm not sure we could say that this is the party of Menzies!

But he did go on in that speech, a speech he gave on 12 April 1965—one might have thought the Liberal Party might have moved on from the sixties, but apparently not, and not in the way that some people haven't moved on from the sixties!—where he was looking at the history of the Liberal Party, and he said:

Now the first thing we did, the thing that our opponents have not done, was to say, "Well, what do we learn from our vicissitudes?"

…   …   …

We said, "Now, here we are, despised and rejected " and we were, of course, at that time led by a leader whose political life was regarded by most people as finished.

Who does that remind us of today? He went on:

So we had no great assets, either in the front or otherwise, but we made up our minds that we would come back, that we would unify ourselves that we would do the things that had to be done - forget about the past and say to ourselves, "We must have one party, full of unity and fire, and we must have a programme, a platform, which will make people understand that we have been thinking in the future,"

I know that the sixties were a long time ago now, but I really don't feel the Liberal Party has learned from that.

The Victorian Liberal shadow Attorney-General, John Pesutto, today conceded that he had probably lost his seat of Hawthorn. Unless you know the electorates in the inner parts of Melbourne, you wouldn't know that it was a blue-ribbon absolute stronghold for the Liberal Party in Victoria. They have lost that; as he said, short of some miracle, he has lost his seat. He gave the very telling example of why the Liberal Party is suffering electoral defeat. He gave the example at his press conference of his 17-year-old daughter's decision to attend last week's climate change rally to illustrate the challenge the Liberal Party faces in ensuring that it can continue to appeal to a wide range of voters. The Liberal Party is, of course, in such a crisis and such a ramshackle state that, really, it's appealing to no-one. And today's energy policy changes tell us once again— (Time expired)