SUBJECTS: Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison; Aged care crisis, Aboriginal flag.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thanks for joining me. This is a government in crisis at a time when there is a crisis in aged care and when we are still dealing with the pandemic. This isn’t a government. It's a shambles. It’s a shambles full of dysfunction and disunity. It’s a shambles which isn’t looking after the interests of Australians because they are obsessed by their internal hatreds and their dysfunction.

The comments by Barnaby Joyce a year ago are just extraordinary and it is untenable for Barnaby Joyce to continue to be Deputy Prime Minister to Prime Minister Morrison when this is what he had to say: “He is a hypocrite and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time, I have never trusted him and I dislike how he earnestly rearranges the truth to a lie’’
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That is something that sums up what the Deputy Prime Minister thinks of Scott Morrison and I note that Barnaby Joyce has said: “Oh that was a year ago, I have got to know him better’’. Hang on a second here. That was after Barnaby Joyce had served in the Cabinet for over half a decade alongside Scott Morrison when Deputy Prime Minister of Australia the first time and a senior cabinet minister serving in a cabinet with Scott Morrison over that period of time and serving in Parliament with him for over a decade. The idea that this was just a flippant remark is simply untenable.

It follows the other revelations of what the people who are closest to Scott Morrison think about his character. The revelations about Gladys Berejiklian, at a time of the bushfire crisis saying that Scott Morrison was a fraud in terms of his character and saying, importantly, that he cared more about politics than he cared about people. That was at the height of the bushfire crisis.

And the context of these Barnaby Joyce comments are very relevant indeed because the context is a Prime Minister who was saying that a reported sexual assault occurred just metres from his office and he wasn’t aware of those allegations; that no one told him in spite of the fact that this alleged incident occurred in the Defence Minister’s office just metres from his own. People in is office knew, people in the department knew. People in Parliament House knew. But no-one thought of telling the Prime Minister? It is also the case that there has been no reporting of all the inquiries that were set up about what Scott Morrison’s office knew about the circumstances around Brittany Higgins and those reports have never seen the light of day. Why didn’t he just ask his office at the time?

No wonder Barnaby Joyce says he doesn’t trust Scott Morrison. Well, if Barnaby Joyce doesn’t trust Scott Morrison, Australians should not trust Scott Morrison. He has shown himself time and time again to be all interested in the marketing and the spin and the photo ops, not interested in telling the truth and not interested in transparency.

It is remarkable that yesterday again we saw the Scott Morrison’s priorities - not dealing with the aged care crisis where older Australians aren’t able to get a shower, aren’t able to get food and water, aren’t having their wounds tended to. His priority was doing a photo op in a hairdressing salon washing the hair of a young woman. Well, older Australians just want to be washed who are in aged care at the moment and they can’t do it because there is a crisis. They want rapid antigen tests to be available. They want this crisis to be dealt with.

So I couldn’t care less that the Liberal Party members all don’t like each other and no-one seems to like Scott Morrison. What I do care about is the consequences of a government that is dysfunctional and unable to go about the business of governing, that is so obsessed by itself.

Barnaby Joyce has just pulled out of an Insiders interview that was scheduled to take place yesterday. They are incapable of doing the jobs which they have
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Scott Morrison should stop jumping in motor cars in Bathurst pretending he is a car driver. He should stop jumping in the cockpit of planes pretending he is a fighter pilot. He should stop trying to pretend he is a hairdresser. He should stop with all the photo ops and just do his day job, do his day job looking after older Australians in aged care who are currently undergoing a crisis and increasingly aged care providers are calling for the defence forces to be brought in to make beds, to do the essentials. This is a government that if Scott Morrison was fair dinkum, he wouldn’t go to a hairdresser, he would go to the Governor General and call an election because quite clearly they are not governing, they are not functioning.

They are just paralysed by disunity and what they should doing is having an election and letting the Australian people decide, letting the Australian people decide whether they want their Prime Minister to be someone who all those closest to him – the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian at the time, Barnaby Joyce, his Deputy Prime Minister, the unnamed Cabinet minister who gave the character assessment of Scott Morrison in those text exchanges with Gladys Berejiklian - whether they think he is fit to continue to be Prime Minister of this land and continue to govern into a second decade.

They do not have an agenda for government and the Australian people should be given the opportunity to cast their own judgement on this Prime Minister just as Barnaby Joyce has. Happy to take questions

REPORTER: Inaudible.

ALBANESE: Also make a comment here in Dulwich Hill about the decision of Premier Perrottet to fly the Aboriginal flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I welcome that decision. I have campaigned for it and I congratulate Cheree Toka, a young woman here in my electorate in Dulwich Hill who has collected tens of thousands of signatures on petitions, who has campaigned so strongly. This is a welcome move. It should fly there proudly for 365 days a year and I look forward to being a part of a government that advances reconciliation by recognising our Indigenous Australians in our national Constitution with a Voice to Parliament. Thanks very much.
 
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