MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator McDONALD (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (17:00): This is extraordinary. We have got to expect standards of the highest leader in this land. It is amazing to me that we still have senior members of the government saying that they won't be lectured to by the opposition, and yet the most basic standards they refuse to acknowledge.
They refuse to protect women from the sort of oafish, boorish commentary that women are sick of. This is the sort of behaviour that belonged at the pub or at a football game with your mates, but instead it was said by our Prime Minister on a publicly broadcast podcast. I don't know if he was distracted by the interviewer, but certainly when he made the sort of remarks he did, I was not surprised.
I'm used to that sort of behaviour from men like Albo, but I was disappointed. We could do better. Of course this is not just about boorish, oafish remarks by a prime minister who lies to Australia, who brings legislation to the parliament that on 50 occasions he says he won't.
He's now wandered well out into the deep water. He is criticising one of our biggest trading partners. He is criticising the first female prime minister of Japan.
He is criticising a company that takes these sorts of relationships very seriously, who has been a good friend to Australia, particularly as the government has made such appalling changes to our gas policy. He has made it at a time when Australia is getting gas policy really wrong. The Japanese have announced that they will be taking gas from Canada and the US in preference to Australia.
If we think that the thoughtless, offensive remarks by the Prime Minister aren't playing into that, we are sadly mistaken. So not only is he boorish and oafish; the Prime Minister is threatening the prosperity of this country. He's threatening the jobs of this country.
He's threatening the very income and taxes that pay the equivalent of the PBS in Australia. It's not good enough. He was okay to apologise to Kylie Minogue when he made the same sort of outrageous comments, but he won't apologise to the leader of a country that we have security arrangements with and trade arrangements with.
Indeed, one million Australians visited Japan last year. We expect better. Australians expect better.
We expect leadership. We expect a prime minister who can provide the sort of trappings of office that leadership should provide. What kind of astounds me, though—as I've said already, I'm not really surprised that it's come from the PM.
He demonstrates this behaviour over and over. There are senior women in the government who are running a protection racket. They are providing protection for him.
They're saying, 'No, nothing to see here.' Can you imagine what they would be saying if that was a conservative leader? Well, we don't actually have to imagine. We watched as they absolutely victimised Linda Reynolds a couple of years ago and drove her into hospital.
They ran the most awful attack on the leader of the coalition, the Prime Minister at the time, but they will not now call out worse behaviour—sexism that truly, I thought, has no place coming from the Prime Minister of Australia. Anyway, if the Labor government and the Labor members and the Labor ministers and the female members of the parliament won't call this out, then we absolutely will.
Because he, the Prime Minister, is damaging our reputation on the world stage. We don't need to be a joke caused by him. He should apologise.
He must apologise, because it is beneath the office of the Prime Minister. The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to order, the Senate will now move to valedictory statements.