Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Education and Training) (15:25): What an extraordinary performance by the member for Watson. The member for Watson has obviously been taking acting lessons over the summer break, because his performance in this extraordinary debate today would make Laurence Olivier blush; it was so over the top. I think most people have not seen a performance like that since Theda Bara in the silent movies. I was embarrassed that the member for Watson could get himself so worked up about a matter that is so vitally important to the nation—so vitally important to the nation that it took until question 20 to be asked about it in question time today. Listening to the member for Watson, you would think the most heinous crime in the history of federation had been perpetrated by the Minister for Agriculture on the Australian polity. Yet it took until 3.05 pm in question time for the first question to be asked. When the opposition wants to build up momentum or they want to get to a crescendo—bring the House to boiling point—that would require a descent in the speaker's ruling or a motion of censure against the Prime Minister or government, usually there is a bit of spade work that goes into it. It usually starts at about two o'clock and by about a quarter to three the Manager of Opposition Business and the Leader of the Opposition are talking about whether now is the time: 'Do we do it now? Do we bring the trap shut, right now, while we are still on television, or do we wait and keep building the momentum for the great crescendo, the great performance, the magic trick, the smoke and mirrors that will bring the House down?' That is what usually happens. I know a bit about that because I have done it a bit myself over the years—with a bit of success—and the member for Grayndler has done it a bit over the years too. He was blushing with shame, dare I say it, during the member for Watson's performance, because he knows it was all very half cocked. It all went off very half cocked. At five past three, the opposition rose to its feet to bring the Minister for Agriculture down, to get his scalp. Sadly, the opposition has been desperately floundering since the budget. That is what is absolutely apparent. The opposition have run up the white flag on the budget and they are looking for any distraction they can find. They have spent 18 months basking, relaxing, lying on a banana lounge sucking on a vanilla milkshake, thinking this is all very easy: 'We'll all be back in government.' All these lovely frontbenchers think they are all going to be ministers in 18 months. They have done none of the hard work necessary in opposition to convince the Australian public to change the government. They thought it was all going to be plain sailing. The member for Watson is a great downhill snow skier, as we know. He thought all he had to do was bend ze knees and he would get into government at the next election. Sadly for them, the budget has been very well received. The government is getting on with the job of doing what small business need and require to create jobs, of doing what families want, in terms of child care and support for them to get back into the workplace. The government are focusing on productivity and participation and population. The government have switched the agenda to the things that the Australian public want to talk about. The Australian public want to know what the government are going to do about jobs, and they got the answer in the budget. They want to know what we are going to do about productivity, and they got the answer in the budget. They know that we are bringing fairness into the workplace through the changes to the paid parental leave scheme. They know that we want to reduce the tax burden, we want to cut spending and we want to achieve savings and, in this way, make the country prosper and the economy grow. But when they look on the other side of the House they see a blank page. They say, 'The future is now.' They say, 'We are us.' They say, 'Them are you,' or whatever the latest expression is. They say, 'I don't know what she said, but I agree with it anyway.' They say, 'It doesn't matter where you start as long as you get somewhere in the end.' The member for Jagajaga says that the money has to be paid for by somewhere. Someone has got a pay for it. They have got to find the money somewhere. The problem is the Australian taxpayers are looking at the opposition and saying, 'What would they do if they were elected?' What they know is that they would increase spending. They would cut the savings of the government. They would increase spending by $16 billion in foreign aid alone. They know that they are going to increase taxes. They would introduce a super tax of 15 per cent on self-funded retirees. They know that the opposition is utterly unreconstructed since the chaos and circus-like atmosphere of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Instead, led by this very weak Leader of the Opposition, they are looking for distractions. The distraction, I think, quite wrongly, has been marriage equality. Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Hunter! Mr PYNE: I think it is very wrong on an issue that is extremely important to a lot of Australians—and extremely important to members in this House—and needs to be handled deftly and successfully. Mr Albanese interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Grayndler! Mr PYNE: Instead, the Leader of the Opposition is playing politics with marriage equality as a distraction from the budget. He must be surprised that the Greens do not support his push, that the marriage equality lobby has been lukewarm in their support for the Leader of the Opposition's bill and that the government has not rushed to support it, because marriage equality was supposed to distract people from the budget. The next thing to distract people from the budget was to not keep up with the bipartisan position on national security. Mr Albanese interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Grayndler will listen to the Leader of the House! Mr PYNE: Most appallingly, the government has put on the agenda taking away the citizenship of dual citizens as our latest measure to protect Australians from the threat of terrorism, and yet the opposition is playing politics with the national security in order to try and distract people from the budget. Ms MacTiernan: I rise on a point of order. There is absolutely no relevance on the part of the— The SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. The member for Hunter! Mr PYNE: As the member for Perth would know, a dissent motion from the Speaker is a very wide-ranging debate, and I am taking the opportunity to be wide ranging, because the sadness for the opposition is that national security was supposed to be the distraction and now they have fallen upon this as the distraction. It is things that the Minister for Agriculture is accused of doing in a private capacity well before he was a minister of the Crown. The opposition has waited until five past three today to ask a question and now move a motion of dissent in the Speaker. The reality is that the opposition is now trying to find a new weapon of mass distraction from the budget. This government has absolute confidence in the Minister for Agriculture. The Minister for Agriculture is doing an outstanding job. He has recovered the live cattle trade. He is increasing the agricultural exports from this country. Agricultural prices are increasing. States like mine in South Australia are benefiting from increased sheepmeat prices and increased wheat prices. The Minister for Agriculture is doing a fantastic job. He and the Minister for Industry are reforming country of origin labelling laws in this country. He is not overreacting to television reports and closing down whole industries. He is building the country, and the Prime Minister and the government have absolute confidence in the member for New England to continue as the Minister for Agriculture. It is quite possible that this is the worst opposition ever in Australia's history. It is quite likely that the Leader of the Opposition is the weakest and laziest Leader of the Opposition in Australia's history. The reality is that they would have been better off having a proper, drawn out brawl for the Labor leadership and fought over what they believed in rather than all forming a circle after the trauma of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years and saying, 'Let's all pretend there are no dysfunctional elements of our party.' They have not cleansed themselves. The public knows it, and on that note I move: That the motion be put. Question agreed to. The SPEAKER: The question is now that the motion of dissent be carried.