Mr ABBOTT (Leader of the Opposition) (2:49 PM) —I move:

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

The SPEAKER —The attendants will bring the gallery to order.

Honourable members interjecting—

The SPEAKER —The House will come to order. The Leader of the Opposition has the call.

Mr ABBOTT —I will start again. I move:

I am sure that as soon as the Prime Minister stands up, consistent with what she has demanded of us on this side of the chamber, she will dissociate herself from those people in the gallery and apologise for their actions. They are here at her behest and she should apologise for their actions.

It used to be said of the late American President Richard Nixon: if he rubbed his nose he was telling the truth; if he tugged his ears he was telling the truth; but, as soon as he opened his mouth, you knew he was lying. That is the Prime Minister’s problem. This suspension is necessary to clean up the constant evasions and deceptions of this Prime Minister. She said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government that I lead.’ There is a carbon tax coming. She said that there would be a climate change people’s convention to establish a deep and lasting convention. There is no people’s convention. She said that there would be an East Timor detention centre before the election. There is no East Timor detention centre—that got lost somewhere in the Timor Sea. She said that there would never be onshore detention centres. There are onshore detention centres coming to a military base near you. She said that we must have a GST grab to fund public hospitals, and it is not happening. She said that the Murray-Darling Basing plan would be implemented, sight unseen. Now, it is not going to happen. She said that there would be a national curriculum, starting in 2011. Now, it is off on the never-never. She said that we must have a cash-for-clunkers scheme to save the environment. That was scrapped as soon as the floods hit Brisbane. She said that the mining tax was settled before the election. Of course, it is not settled. She said that we had to have a tax summit to put the Henry review fully on the table, and now the great disappearing tax summit has become a tax forum and soon it will be a gathering of a coffee club.

This is a Prime Minister who has almost no familiarity with the truth. She claims that China is closing down its coal fired power stations—patently, untrue. She said that the Christmas Island detention riots were in-hand, and the centre was, subsequently, partially destroyed. She said that she has believed in an emissions trading scheme all along. Tell that to the foreign minister whose emissions trading scheme she sabotaged and then whose leadership she destroyed. I want to quote something that this delusional Prime Minister said to the Australian people a week ago. Listen to this Prime Minister, in full Napoleon mode:

Why did this Prime Minister stand up and brazenly say to the Australian people, six days before the last election, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’? Was that a Prime Minister who would always put our country first? Was that a Prime Minister who would take a few knocks for the people? Of course, it was not.

We have seen quite a few different faces from this Prime Minister over the last little while. We have seen real Julia; we have seen fake Julia. We have seen wooden Julia; we have seen teary Julia. We have seen all the way with LBJ Julia; we have seen Bible expert Julia. We have seen George Washington ‘I will never tell a lie’ Julia. The fact is: the one thing we have never seen is truthful Julia. That is the one face of this Prime Minister we will never see because the one thing that she could not say to the Australian people, six days before the last election, was, ‘Yes, I will be honest and up-front with you: there will be a carbon tax under the government I lead.’ That is the fundamental problem with everything this government does. This government is based on a lie. What did we see today? Today, we saw precious Julia—very precious Julia, indeed—

The SPEAKER —The Leader of the Opposition will refer to members by their parliamentary titles.

Mr ABBOTT —campaigning and complaining about a few nasty placards. I’ll tell you what: we never heard any complaints from former Prime Minister John Howard when people like the minister for climate change and the Assistant Treasurer fronted rallies, before placards, calling the Prime Minister ‘Satan’ and ‘Hitler’ and ‘baby killer’. This is the kind of thing that the former Prime Minister had to put up with, and members opposite did not utter the slightest word of an apology or show the slightest sign of embarrassment. This is the preciousness of a Prime Minister who thinks that anyone who does not agree with her is an extremist. She thinks all of the people who were good enough to turn up outside of this parliament building, yesterday, were somehow extremists—everyone except the member for Robertson, who was there with them. The trouble with the extremists, as she sees them, is that they include the Chairman of BlueScope Steel, who is not only the Chairman of BlueScope Steel but also is so extreme that he is on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. She says that everyone who does not agree with her is extreme but she so forgets herself that she cannot remember that one of the extremes is the extreme she relies on to stay in government. This is a measure of the dishonesty, the mendacity and the hypocrisy of this Prime Minister. Why shouldn’t the Australian people be angry with this Prime Minister who won office based on a lie?

Why shouldn’t they be angry with a Prime Minister who said there would be no carbon tax? Now she says there will be a carbon tax, a carbon tax that will put $300 a year on your power bill, just for starters, a carbon tax that would put 6½c a litre on your petrol bill, just for starters, a carbon tax that will put $6,240 on the price of a new home, just for starters, a carbon tax that will cost 126,000 jobs in regional Australia, just for starters, and a carbon tax that will close down the steel industry, the aluminium industry and the motor industry, just for starters. I say to this Prime Minister: if she really is a person of conviction, if she really does believe that this carbon tax that she once said would never happen must happen—if she really believes this—why doesn’t she have the guts to face the people? Why doesn’t she have the guts to seek a mandate on her carbon tax and then accept the judgment of the Australian people? (Time expired)

The SPEAKER —Is the motion seconded?