Senate debates

Thursday, 24 June 2021

Bills

COVID-19 Disaster Payment (Funding Arrangements) Bill 2021; Second Reading

10:39 am

Photo of Murray WattMurray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection, Senator McCarthy: total despair—and total distrust. What they see is a government that is completely focused on themselves rather than on getting Australians vaccinated and keeping them safe from COVID through quarantine stations. We know that this Prime Minister is, if nothing else, a poll-driven marketing man. Let's forget about the public health benefits of this for the moment. With every poll you look at, Australians want purpose-built quarantine stations. But we have a Prime Minister who is so belligerent, so stubborn, so focused on constructing fights with state premiers that he won't even sit down and talk about a quarantine station in Queensland.

The Queensland government has been trying for months to get this government to engage on a quarantine station, in Queensland, right next to an airport and right next to a hospital. All you ever hear from the Prime Minister is, 'There's not enough detail.' You ask, 'What detail do you need?' and he says, 'There's not enough detail.' It is absolute rubbish from this Prime Minister. He's being stubborn. He doesn't want to sit down and take control of this situation and take responsibility for what is going on and lead the country. His coalition partners, the National Party, are completely obsessed with who gets to drive in the big car, who gets the big office, who gets the biggest hat and who gets the biggest pay rise.

As our leader, Anthony Albanese, has said, it is time for this government to get focused: more jabbing, less stabbing. That's what we need from this government. They are so obsessed with stabbing each other in the back, which, let's face it, they've been doing for three years in the National Party.

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