Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Bragg is urging the Senate to vote for this proposal for a committee inquiry. That would require us to deal with it before 7.30. I'll of course endeavour to make a contribution that makes sure the Senate gets an opportunity to do that. If we fall short of that and I run over time—Senator Bragg could have prevented me from doing that by pulling up stumps on his contribution at 7.14. But we'll need to come back and talk about all this again if we can't get to a vote on the referral.

This is the problem with the modern Liberal Party. It's all tactics and no strategy. What you do a couple of hours ago—you want a referral to the Economics References Committee. I'll make sure I stay relevant to the economics committee and this referral. Senator Canavan is on the economics committee. Senator Bragg and his mates conducted an ambush in here. They didn't tell Senator Canavan and tried to dump him off the committee. It was only the Labor Party, defending Senator Canavan's right to sit on that committee, that asked a few questions about what actually is going on here. What can we do to contribute, to try to get a little bit less of the toxic politics, the nastiness and the character assassinations that have gone on? We're here to help.

Senator Canavan is being bullied out of his position on the economics committee because a bunch of you, who seem to be getting better at ambushes—I'll speak of another ambush, a bit like one of those Mafia dos. It happened just before a funeral. Everybody got together at somebody's house. They looked like a group of ghosts caught exiting a house that they'd been preparing to haunt. These boyos getting together—some of whom have never achieved national prominence before. Suddenly there they are. 'I want to be the machine guy.' They're hanging out with each other, talking about who they're going to kill, who they're going to get, what they're going to do and what a boffo in whatever state it was wants to do for Mr Taylor or for whatever his name is—the member for Canning. These characters are all about the hate and not about their mates. They are all about the internal conflict and not about ordinary Australians trying to get a home. That's the problem.

The toxic politics, the negative politics, the 'no-alition' politics that utterly absorbed the National and Liberal parties over the Morrison period—remember him?—and over the last term, when you had nothing useful to contribute for Australia, have come back to haunt you now. If you haven't got anything constructive to say, if you look down on ordinary Australians trying to have a go, then you end up in this toxic bin fire of nasty politics and self-absorption. In this joint, these characters over there—mirrors would wear out from them looking at themselves and thinking about themselves. They're talking to each other about themselves and talking to each other about how much more right wing they want to become, how much more divisive they want to become and how much more hateful and isolated and nasty they want to become. There's never a moment's thought for ordinary people who want to buy a home. There's never a moment's thought for ordinary people who want their wages to go up. There's never a moment's thought for building things, constructing things or doing things together.

Debate interrupted.