Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary contribution from Senator Paterson, coming in here and trying to lecture us about how we should behave when the nation is in a fire crisis. It is the government who has politicised the Defence Force in this country, and to have the minister in question time today not being able to answer the questions, trying to twist the words—you tried to do the same thing, saying it's all about authorisation. The reality is the Australian people know how you, the government, have tried to politicise the Defence Force. You're getting a reputation for it. You come in here and try to say we should be talking about closing the gap. Well, we will be talking about that this afternoon. But it's your government that has been in power for the last seven years, so to try to lecture us about closing the gap and what we should be focusing on is just a little bit rich.

To use the Australian fire crisis that we Australians face and to politicise it by the Liberal Party wanting to make sure that they could raise money off the bushfire tragedy is low. That is really low even for this government. So the bar is not very high at all. But we know that, as people referred to the Prime Minister as 'Scotty from marketing', you have come in here trying to spin it. We saw a pathetic attempt by the Minister for Defence to do the same thing. Just own it. Own that you have politicised the Defence Force. You have tried to politicise and get some traction and financial gains out of the tragedy that has beset so many Australians right across this country.

And it's not just what's happening in Victoria. It's in my home state of Tasmania as well. We have seen a Prime Minister who is shonky. He is absolutely shonky. He will say and do anything. This is not just what we are saying; this is, in fact, coming from people within your own party. They're asking questions when we want to turn to the shonky sports rort under Minister McKenzie. We had a question today referred to one of your parliamentary colleagues: 'Quite obviously he is referring to the Prime Minister's office and the party directors like Hirsty'—