I loved my uncle Stewart—a great man and sporting editor of the Newcastle Herald, which is a great publication up there—but they referred to him as Snake Bite because he could enter Phar Lap in a donkey race and lose. This is the ability this man had. I looked up 'snake bitten' in the dictionary, and it says, 'an idiom meaning to be extraordinarily unlucky, doomed to misfortune or caught in a persistent streak of making mistakes and stuffing things up'. And what about this government? This government should be named 'Snake Bite' because this is everything they do; this is their modus operandi.

We have our treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers. He's not a medical doctor; he's a doctor of economics. If he were a medical doctor, he would know the Hippocratic oath says do no harm. But that's not this doctor. This doctor walks in like a bull in a China shop and has a go. Let's have a look at the last month. We've had backdowns on ATO fees, on the veterans cap, on the widows tax and on the trust tax. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. The treasurer of this country doesn't know what he's doing. Competency has to matter. We come in here and we hear all the great words: 'Oh, we know things are tough, but wages are up.' But real wages aren't up. It doesn't matter what's in your pay packet; it's what you can buy that matters. And, under this government, your pay packet buys less—every day.

They come in here with these words. We look at all of their policies. They're out there saying, 'Oh, businesses will absorb these costs,' but their own tax department won't absorb these costs. They've stopped taking credit card payments while they're closing down on cash and while they're doing all these things. This is hypocrisy and a stunning inability to govern this country, which is why we are here. Do no harm. Protect the Australians, protect your businesses and protect your economy. Get your policy right. Live in the real world. The wheels are falling off.

Let's go through this. We have housing taxes that they brought in to make housing more affordable. They've actually brought down the value of everything that you already own, so your house is worth less. But—here's the kicker—because interest rates have gone up because of these taxes, people are less able to afford them. You can't afford a house even though it costs less, because serviceability has gone up. They've got a housing future fund that they put $10 billion into, and it isn't actually building anywhere near the amount of homes it's allowed to do. You've got a social media ban for under-16-year-olds that doesn't stop them having social media. You have wage rises that are putting up inflation and giving you less in your packet. You have $12 billion worth of subsidies for industry so they can keep their doors open for the cheapest energy in the world. Everything you do turns to rubbish. You guys couldn't organise hand relief in a monkey brothel with a bag full of bananas. This is a ridiculous state of play. Do no harm!

I know there are good people over there in the government—I know there are. It is time to stand up to the Prime Minister. It is time to say, 'Get out of the seat.' Put the good people in charge, the people who know what they're doing. Stop subjecting the Australian people to this sort of rubbish policy. Stop subjecting the Australian people to words that do nothing. Stop subjecting the Australian people to pain every time they get a pay packet.

We see it doesn't work anywhere. We saw the massive billions that went into offshore wind—gone. We saw the billions that went into hydrogen—gone. And we're seeing the billions that are going everywhere—gone—because this government wants to play student politics and not govern the nation in the interest of the Australians. They want to govern it in the interest of their friends. They want to govern it in the interest of their unions and their industry super funds. I know there are good people. Stand up to the Prime Minister and say, 'Get out of the way.' Stand up to Dr Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, and say, 'Get out of the way.' Put people who can do the job to run this nation in control. The wheels have fallen off. We can't wait for an election. You people in the Labor Party should stand up and change it today.

Question agreed to.