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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Page: 289

Mr MORRISON (Cook) (15:19): I second the motion. Standing orders must be set aside to require this Prime Minister to stand to account for the rotten culture that has overtaken her government and which would be the subject of the debate that would follow the motion. There is a stench about this government that grows stronger every single day. It is the smell of distrust, the smell of division, the smell of disloyalty and the smell of incompetence, arrogance, dirty tricks and cover-up. Above all, it is the smell of the decay that is eating into the very fabric of this government and that is affecting its very culture under the leadership of this Prime Minister. The events of Australia Day and the appalling and irresponsible conduct of the Prime Minister's office in the cover-up that followed are a window into the soul of this Prime Minister's government, of her office and of the culture that she has allowed to be created. What a dark place that is.

The events of that day betray the culture of this Prime Minister and the culture she has allowed to overtake her government. The Prime Minister seems to believe in spontaneous incitement, based on things she has said in this place. She fails to understand that on that day her office compromised the security of our national leaders for nothing other than to make a cheap political point.

The smell of this government is a very familiar one. We smell it in Queensland—it is in the air there—and I remember it all too well as the smell of the squalid Labor government in New South Wales. The culture of that government now infects this government here. The same dirty tricks, the same culture, the same responsibilities that are flouted daily and the same culture of cover-up. We remember that it was the New South Wales government just months out from an election that had parliament prorogued in order to ensure that there was not a parliamentary inquiry into the electricity sell-off in New South Wales. That is the culture of Sussex Street when it goes to Macquarie Street. Sussex Street came to this place with the election of the Rudd government and has been taken to supersize under this Prime Minister. We have to remember that it was the former New South Wales Premier who pump-primed her own discretionary budget tenfold in the final year leading up to the election. We all remember the 'Don't you know who I am?' culture of the former member for Robertson and certainly former minister in New South Wales, Minister Della Bosca. We also remember the underpant dancing of the New South Wales state government—I suppose that is something for us to look forward to from the culture that is infecting this government on a daily basis—the rorts that took place in New South Wales, the referrals to ICAC, the corruption following from this culture. The culture starts, the action follows and the rest becomes history.

This was a government that thought it could get away with anything. That is what the Prime Minister's office thought on Australia Day: they apparently refused, according to the Prime Minister's word, to inform the Prime Minister. So the next day when she was interviewed she knew nothing. She stood there and took a swing at Ray Hadley on 2GB, as she would do on any other occasion when she had the opportunity—blame the media, blame everybody else, blame Tony Abbott. She will find someone to blame: 'It certainly wasn't me.' So this Prime Minister went through this process that has become all too familiar. She distances herself, she denies the things that have taken place and she singles out those who are then cut loose to touch the void, as is so common when this government, using the Sussex Street tactics, takes over.

I think there are two certainties in Australian politics. One is that Labor governments invariably go out in disgrace. The other is that coalition governments are invariably elected to clean up the mess. We need to debate this motion because we need to clean the air. We need to clean it of the stench that rises out of this government on a daily basis, whether it is their disloyalty, their distrust of one another, their breaking of promises or this bizarre episode we saw over Australia Day which was apparently a spontaneous incitement. This is a government that needs to stand to account. This is a government that refuses to take responsibility, just as we saw in New South Wales. As New South Wales went, so this government will go—and so it shall deservedly go.