MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (16:08): I too stand to speak on this urgency motion because last week we saw the latest example of a prime minister who can't tell the difference between the truth and fiction. This is a prime minister who says one thing when he's out hunting for votes and another thing when the voting is done.

This is a prime minister who will call black 'white' and will call white 'black', despite the evidence clearly showing that the PM's version of events is nothing more than fantasy. As Senator Blyth just mentioned, last year, the Prime Minister quite clearly fell off the back of a stage. It was telecast around the country.

There was no doubt whatsoever what actually happened. The PM's version of events was: 'I didn't fall off the stage. I just stepped backwards.' A couple of weeks ago in a really, really grubby podcast that he did, the footage clearly showed him making creepy, demeaning and sexist gestures about the Japanese Prime Minister.

The PM's version was: 'I was misrepresented.' Every single other person in this country knew exactly what the Prime Minister had done, and yet for some reason the Prime Minister thought, if he just said he hadn't done it, somehow that was enough for him not to have done it. Prime Minister, the footage told a very different story. When he was asked about the comments and the gesture, he said he was unaware that he was going to get that line of questioning from the podcast presenter.

Now we find out that it was actually the Prime Minister himself who contacted the podcaster and sought to go on her podcast. This is a PM who told Australians that his word was his bond. That can be proved to be quite clearly untrue.

Ninety-seven times before the 2022 election, the Prime Minister promised Australians that they would get a reduction in their power bills of $275—not true. On becoming the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese promised that he would go to the Garma Festival every year—not true. Fifty times before the last election, the PM promised no changes to CGT or negative gearing—not true.

Prior to the 2022 election, the Prime Minister promised to put the care back into aged care—not true. Today we see a prime minister waging a war on older Australians, including through his botched rollout of the aged-care reforms that see older Australians' care needs being assessed by a computer algorithm without any human override. This algorithm hasn't ever been tested in real life and is generating outcomes that are causing serious detrimental health impacts for older Australians.

Then there is pushing pensioners into poverty to keep their private health insurance, the private health insurance they've paid all of their lives. Just at a time when they're likely to depend on that private health insurance, the Prime Minister is saying, 'We're not going to give you any support for that anymore.' With his cruel widows tax, he'll punish older Australians at the most traumatic time of their life, when they've just lost their husband or their wife or their partner.

This is a prime minister who in 2022 stood up and talked to the Set the standard report, which was delivered by Kate Jenkins. What sort of a standard are you setting, Prime Minister, when you can't even take responsibility for your own actions? The Prime Minister made this comment: No-one deserves to feel unsafe or disrespected in any workplace, let alone our national parliament.

Let us be the example for Australia that the national parliament ought to be. What about the national parliament of Japan? What about the Japanese prime minister?

I've got to say the Prime Minister needs to start talking the talk. He said: We must, to put it simply, walk the talk. Prime Minister, you need to walk the talk because, quite clearly, you're not.

You can't trust this prime minister to keep his promises. You can't trust this prime minister to keep his word. This prime minister said in June this year: No matter who you support in politics, it is completely unacceptable to demean, objectify, belittle or offend women.

But he is now prepared to make his female cabinet ministers defend him when he makes demeaning, objectifying, belittling and offensive comments about the Japanese prime minister.