Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and the Public Service (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Gallacher today relating to the Morrison Government.

I was wondering over the last day or so what could have possibly been my most favourite farcical moment, in the last sitting week, of the leadership debacle. I was wondering whether it was on the Tuesday morning, when former Prime Minister Turnbull invited the party room to the normal meeting and declared all positions vacant—not to give anyone an opportunity to contest that but to simply throw that open and ambush people, to find that he still had 35 people, from a standing start, who did not support his leadership. Or was it after that, after he actually won that vote on the Tuesday morning? Was my favourite farcical moment the offers of 100 per cent support by all the senior ministers both in this place and in the House of Representatives? Or was it the flipping of those ministers during the course of the next 24 hours, when those ministers that had just given their 100 per cent support then flipped their position and decided to support Peter Dutton? Or was my favourite farcical moment when Malcolm Turnbull actually set a rather high bar by saying that until he could see an absolute majority of Liberal Party members on paper—that being 43 names—he would not call another party room meeting?

I had to land here: my favourite farcical moment was when Warren Entsch, who wanted to support Malcolm Turnbull, gave the 43rd signature on the petition to get Malcolm Turnbull to call another party room meeting—even though he wanted to support Malcolm Turnbull. That had to be, for me, the most farcical moment of the whole lot. But he didn't give that 43rd vote because he wanted to support Peter Dutton. He didn't give that 43rd vote because he wanted to support Scott Morrison. He gave that 43rd vote because he remembered the treachery that Malcolm Turnbull himself had applied in the past, to Brendan Nelson.

All their problems do go back to this. It started right at the very beginning of this terrible, dysfunctional Liberal government, which we've now had for five-odd years. We remember that Howard lost his seat and resigned, and left them absolutely leaderless and rudderless even though everyone, including everyone on this side of the chamber, thought that Peter Costello, who had long sought the leadership mantle, would simply step into it. But, being the man that Peter Costello was, he decided, 'Nah, not going to be Prime Minister any time soon. I won't even put my hand up,' which allowed a battle between Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. Brendan Nelson won that battle by 45 votes to Malcolm Turnbull's 42 votes, and Costello didn't even enter the ballot. That was in November 2007. In September 2008, challenger Turnbull defeated opposition leader Brendan Nelson by 41—the beginning of the treachery there. And, again, Costello, who was still in parliament at that time, didn't even enter the ballot.

Then we move to December 2009 and we have, again, another leadership ballot. Tony Abbott enters the race, Turnbull enters the race and Joe Hockey enters the race. I remember those days being just as farcical as the last sitting week around here. In the first round, Abbott got 35, Turnbull got 26 and Hockey got 23. In the second round, Abbott defeated opposition leader Turnbull by 42 to 41—one vote!

In February 2015 Prime Minister Abbott defeated the challenger, which was actually an empty chair, by 61 votes to 39. The empty chair did better than Peter Dutton did in his last round! We fast-forward to September 2015, and Malcolm Turnbull challenges Prime Minister Abbott and defeats him 54 votes to 44 votes.

Last Tuesday, in the last sitting week, Prime Minister Turnbull, with 48 votes, defeated challenger Dutton— (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall, I remind you to refer to those in the other chamber by their correct titles.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were a lot of mentions of 'farcical' in that last contribution, by my good colleague Senator Marshall, but the most farcical thing I've heard for a long time is that speech! I can't quite work out what it was all about. It seemed that Senator Marshall was trying to show his prowess with the numbers from various challenges or contests within the Liberal Party over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, Senator Marshall wasn't quite as good in his recollection of the numbers from all the Labor Party challenges that I've seen in the time I've been here. I can remember, back in the time when Mr Hawke was the Prime Minister, how Mr Keating challenged him. Unfortunately, I don't have Senator Marshall's expertise in getting the numbers one way or the other.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Remember Bill Hayden.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I remember Bill Hayden too. But then Mr Keating challenged, and that wasn't successful, and then we struggled on, with the Labor Party slitting each other's throats. The animosity was so bad in those days. We eventually had Mr Keating challenging again and this time succeeding. And then of course there was all the backstabbing and bitterness that followed that. Fast-forward through to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd times. The animosity, the hatreds, the anger that you saw within the Labor Party at that time was palpable. And we know Mr Albanese is just waiting for the opportunity to get to Mr Shorten, and I see Mr Shorten again is running second in the contest of best Prime Minister—and there are only two contestants—against Mr Morrison, who has been there a mere two weeks. Yet Mr Morrison still leads Mr Shorten substantially, after just two weeks, on who Australians think would be the better Prime Minister.

I think those in the Labor Party who have some ambitions for the future might start sharpening the knives for Mr Shorten. That's because I know how Senator Keneally is doing that, in her obvious desire to become the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. That's a contest that we'll look at with some interest as the next few months evolve. So, whilst I would really love to debate Senator Marshall on Senator Gallacher's question, I just can't see any relevance in the litany of figures that Senator Marshall produced—which are apparently, according to him, figures that happened within the Liberal Party.

What the people of Australia are concerned about, what I'm concerned about and what all of us on this side are concerned about is getting good government for the Australian people—implementing good policies that make Australia go forward. And we can see that happening, since the Labor Party was defeated back in 2013. We've created over a million jobs for our fellow Australians. We've actually started to pay off the billions of dollars of debt that the Labor Party ran up. And I repeat, time and time again, that when the Howard government left there was $60 billion in credit in the nation's piggy bank. But with a few short years of Labor we had debts that, if they had not been arrested, would have been approaching $700 billion to $800 billion by today.

The coalition government, with Mr Morrison as Treasurer, I might say, has turned that around, and now we have a situation in which there is a real projection towards a surplus the year after next. The deficits that Labor left us with have come down each year, and we're looking forward to the surplus that Mr Wayne Swan, the Labor Treasurer, promised every year, and every year it went up. But we have started the trajectory downwards on Labor's debt, and the year after next we'll move into the surplus category. That's what we're interested in, that's what Mr Morrison's interested in and that's what Australians elect us to do. (Time expired)

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also wish to take note of the answer given by Senator Cormann to my question on why Malcolm Turnbull is no longer the Prime Minister of Australia. I think the answer is relatively clear and relatively succinct. The answer seems to revolve around the contribution of Senator Cormann and a group of like-minded people. Some of the media commentariat have managed to provide some fairly succinct paragraphs in their journals. First, there was Adelaide's The Advertiser, on 30 August 2018: 'Finance Minister Mathias Cormann managed to pledge loyalty to three prime ministers or would-be prime ministers in the space of three days. This has to be some sort of a record. It might also indicate that loyalty is not high on his list of priorities. Senator Cormann, when confronted by the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull and told that his switch this week was akin to giving in to terrorists, said he knew, adding that he had no choice. He did, but he made the wrong one, given the combination of damage to his reputation and the loss of respect of friends inside and outside of parliament.' Another reputable journalist, David Speers, said: 'One cabinet minister reckons either Dutton or Mathias Cormann lied to him about the numbers and led them off a cliff.'

When I move around South Australia, people ask, 'What happened to the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull? What happened to Prime Minister Turnbull? Who's this new bloke? Why has he gone?' Well, the answer lies fairly and squarely over there, with the Hon. Mathias Cormann, who decided at a very late point to change his allegiance from the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull to the Hon. Peter Dutton. He did the right thing, as he said—the Westminster system: go down the courtyard, look down the camera, resign, and off you go.

But it appears as if they couldn't count! The unfortunate predicament he was in then was that he was on the backbench for a day and then he had to declare allegiance to a new Prime Minister. I think he was on the backbench for probably two hours or maybe four hours and then he was back in charge. It really goes to the heart of the issue here. I know that the government is making a great story about its contribution to economics, its contribution to job growth and the like, but it doesn't have a great record on contributions to middle Australia out there. The growth rate for wages is extremely low in historic terms. Middle Australia is missing out in a whole, powerful way. It couldn't be clearer that wage stagnation is really hurting middle Australia. They can bang on all they like, but the simple fact is that company profits are growing more than five times faster than wages. So, the trickle-down economics that's so often espoused in here is not getting through.

We're seeing that in the Newspolls, 40 of which we've now seen—40 negative Newspolls—and if they keep going I think it's possible they could get to a 60-40 vote. If they can get to 56-44 I think you can go worse. I think they can actually get worse than where they are. Look at what happened in Wagga on the weekend, where there was a 29 per cent swing in a seat they've held for 60 years! These are pretty gloomy times for those over there.

There was the shambolic episode of the Prime Minister not telling even his closest leadership team that he was going to have a spill in caucus. No-one in his leadership team knew he was going to have a spill, and then to get gazumped by his own party, and to torture his own party by demanding 43 signatures on a petition, and to keep it going, live by the minute, every single day. The most uninterested elector in Australia knows what happened last week. They can probably point out a few of the main actors in there, and Senator Cormann was right in the middle of all that. If it's true, as the commentators say, that he's cast aspersions on his own loyalty instincts, I can just say this: when there were leadership challenges in the Labor Party I saw people who got up, resigned and walked away. They didn't join the next team, they didn't join the next leader; they got up, took a principled position and stepped back. That's probably what the Westminster system envisages, not resigning for four hours and coming back in the same job a day later. Anyway, that's for the people on that side to worry about. All we know is that middle Australia has looked at this as disgraceful.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll be frank about this: it's been a divisive time for the coalition government. As a Nationals senator, I watched on and saw my Liberal colleagues shed some blood. But, you see, your memory has failed. Do you remember the Rudd government followed by the Gillard government? Senators in the Labor Party were saying to me, 'We've got to get rid of that Julia Gillard, Wacka.' 'She's got to go,' they were saying to me. 'She's going to take us over the cliff.' And then they brought Mr Kevin Rudd back. Let me tell you this: time heals all wounds. That's a fact. We know the tailwind's behind the opposition now and they're getting pretty cocky about everything, but I'll give them a little reminder. Remember a few weeks ago when Mr Shorten went to wind back the tax cuts for business? Didn't he cop a flogging from the business sector, the biggest employer of our country? But they don't care about employing people. It was a pretty rough week for Mr Shorten. Of course, Mr Albanese was getting pretty determined and confident.

I predict that we'll have a May election next year. According to the Constitution, we have to have a Senate election by 18 May. When we go to that election, we will see the stability coming under Prime Minister Scott Morrison. We can see the polls. Yes, they're bad—I'll be frank; I'm not going to sit here and dream something up—but that's to be expected after a divisive couple of weeks. But you watch them improve. They'll improve when people start looking at the tax hikes by the Labor Party and what they're going to do to negative gearing. We've seen what they did when they were in government under finance minister Senator Penny Wong. On 1 January 2013, they brought in a tax law where if you earned more than a quarter of a million dollars and invested in a business it was no longer tax deductible. You borrowed money to go into business—no, they didn't want you to invest in businesses, but you could invest in housing. Now, of course, they'll do away with negative gearing on second-hand houses. Well, the mum and dad workers out there that have worked hard, reared their kids, educated their kids, nearly paid for their house and want another investment, a second-hand house, to give them some income in retirement won't be able to negative gear that. That's what will happen under Labor. Of course, if they do happen to buy something and sell it with a capital gain, a huge increase in capital gains tax will be coming.

Of course, the cost of electricity is the big issue. It's amazing: when Hazelwood, the coal-fired power plant in Victoria, shut down, electricity prices rose by 170 per cent in Victoria, 86 per cent in South Australia and 102 per cent in New South Wales. They want to cut down more reliable generation of electricity, reduce supply and increase demand. It will take us down the road of South Australia, the state where I grew up, where I was a fifth-generation farmer. See what happened down there with a 50 per cent renewable energy target—the cost of that. They want to go back to 45 per cent emissions reductions on 2005 levels. Even Dr Finkel has told us in Senate estimates—he told you, Senator Macdonald—that we can reduce all of our emissions in Australia but the effect on the planet will be virtually zero; miniscule. That's taking us down a costly road.

When it comes election time, the people of Australia are going to be well aware of the Labor Party's policies: their plan for a $200 billion hike in taxes; to tax the family workers, those having a go, who want to buy something and make a bit of gain on it by improving it or whatever; and to stick with their taxation system that does not encourage people to invest in business. The fact is that the private sector derives our nation's wealth. The business sector is where our nation's wealth comes from. They do the employing and they pay the taxes that keep places like this going—the public servants, the politicians and everyone else in the public sector. The more you stifle and pull back on the private sector, the more cost to our nation's wealth creation. We've seen that over many, many years. Of course, we have to talk about debt. At least we've got a government, under Finance Minister Cormann and Treasurer Scott Morrison, with the budget heading back to black print. In all of my life, the Labor Party's never understood what black print is at the bottom of a budget, whether it be the states of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania—back in the early nineties—or sending New South Wales broke. It's always the coalition that's got to clean up the financial mess. That'll be the case now when we get it right, and people will be well aware of that come the next election, I can guarantee you, Madam Deputy President.

So that is the tailwind behind them. The wind is going to turn around, don't you worry about that— (Time expired).

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

In taking note of answers given by Senator Cormann today, what he would not acknowledge is that this is a government of the living dead: it is a zombie government. Imagine being in the Liberal party room tomorrow as people look around suspiciously at each other, thinking of the scores they have to settle and the policy documents they have to leak. In fact, just as an aside, I understand that there are so many leaks that media organisations have had to timetable the release of some of them so the papers aren't too bulked up with them! But what we do know about the rabble passing itself off as a government is that they cannot be trusted, even by each other—and certainly not by the Australian people.

But let's examine the Leader of the Government in the Senate. He has always presented well. I don't want to give too many compliments, but he has always been effective in estimates, with an excellent—perhaps natural—stonewalling capacity. But when he retires at some point in the next year, he will be remembered for two things. Firstly, he's doubled the nation's federal debt on his watch as finance minister. And, secondly, he asserted that the former member for Wentworth needed to be axed because he no longer had the numbers.

This is the debt-doubling finance minister who cannot add up. This is the debt-doubling, credit-rating-risking finance minister who needs a new calculator. Perhaps it will have to be a solar-powered one, if that's allowed in the dinosaur Luddite faction of the Western Australian Liberal Right. I hear that in the leadership spill, it was decided that even a spreadsheet was superfluous to keep track of the numbers.

Senator Cormann, though, is an expert in deficits. His candidate for leadership suffered from one. The Leader of the Government in the Senate talked a good game while it lasted, but his career has gone up in a puff of the cigar smoke of which he is so fond. It is, indeed, reminiscent of the cigar smoke of self-congratulation after his first promise-shattering budget. The people of Australia will keep on asking, 'Why?' The only answer we have is from Senator Cormann, and that is that Mr Turnbull did not have the numbers. But given the assertions from several Liberal members of parliament that they only supported the spill to make the Lib spill crisis go away, and even wrote that on the petition, it's clear that the former Prime Minister probably did have the numbers—and certainly did if we add in the ministerial three: Senators Cormann, Cash and Fifield. Mr Turnbull would have survived if they had held true to the word that they had given, especially in Senator Cormann's case in saying that he did support the Prime Minister—support he gave only hours before and day after day, before saying that he did not support the Prime Minister on that fateful day.

There are many things to ask about this government, like, 'What's the go?' but this is the most serious. If Senator Cormann were your local GP, Madam Deputy President, you'd be a little worried. If you went to visit him for a consult about a head cold, he'd take a look at you, shake his head with concern, pronounce you terminal and shoot you in the head before things got worse. The fact is that the former Prime Minister made a fatal error in trusting Senator Cormann. It was a politically fatal mistake, and I think the current Prime Minister, Prime Minister Morrison, should take note of the fact that Senator Cormann is not wearing his Australian flag lapel badge today—proof of potential treachery ahead!

If Senator Cormann had answered the question honestly today, he would have said, 'The reason that Prime Minister Turnbull is no longer the Prime Minister is because I, Senator Cormann—along with Senator Fifield and Senator Cash—sold him out at the last minute.' That was what happened on that fateful Friday. Senator Cormann—the loyal, the honourable Senator Cormann—having made a great show of loyalty to Mr Turnbull, when it came to the crunch, ratted on his leader.

When the votes were cast in the Liberal party room, it became obvious to everyone that if Senator Cormann, with Senator Fifield and Senator Cash, had remained loyal to Mr Turnbull, the spill motion would not have passed and Mr Turnbull would still be Prime Minister today. Apparently, the former Prime Minister's face was a picture of anguish. This is the truth that Senator Cormann was not willing to tell the Senate today.

There is of course a deeper answer to that question, one which Senator Cormann is also not willing or able to give. Instead, we had to get the true answer from Mr Turnbull himself. The answer is that the Liberal Party is riven with division, and riven about energy policy and how to treat colleagues. They are riven on all sorts of matters. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.