Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:12): I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Curtin from moving the following motion forthwith: That the Prime Minister explain to the House and to the Australian people why she should continue to hold the office of Prime Minister, an office she has debased in the manner in which she came to it, in her handling of the Craig Thomson affair, in the contradictions that riddle her explanation of the role her staff played in the Australia Day riot and in her deception of the Australian people before the 2010 election over the introduction of the carbon tax, gambling reform, means testing the private health insurance rebate and operating an open and transparent government. The office of Prime Minister comes with great responsibility, and the person who holds that office must have integrity, honesty, competence and good judgment. Standing orders must be suspended because this Prime Minister has so debased the highest office in the land, and her government is in such turmoil as a result, this motion must be debated. The Prime Minister lacks the fundamental qualities that a Prime Minister, the pinnacle of government, demands, and without integrity, without honesty, without competence and without good judgment in the Prime Minister this government cannot function. Standing orders must be suspended to debate this motion. Cabinet ministers are spending their evenings with Labor backbenchers counting numbers, tallying up the columns of names and not running the country. One of the great burdens that falls upon the shoulders of any Prime Minister is to be the custodian of our parliamentary system and to ensure that the bonds of trust between the parliament and the voting public are not broken. I can assure the member for Griffith that he has the vote of the Chief Government Whip. The Prime Minister has monumentally failed in that task, and that is why standing orders must be suspended. The Prime Minister betrayed the trust of the former Prime Minister when she was his deputy. The Prime Minister betrayed the trust of the member for Denison. But, most grievously, the Prime Minister has betrayed the trust of the Australian people. The conduct of this Prime Minister makes it clear that she has little regard for the truth and thus that she holds the Australian public in contempt. That is why standing orders must be suspended. There have been new revelations overnight about this Prime Minister's conduct which require standing orders to be suspended so we can debate my substantive motion. The Prime Minister cannot on the one hand express noble sentiments, such as those in her fine Closing the Gap address this morning, while presiding over a culture within her office so squalid that they saw fit to incite the Aboriginal tent embassy protesters on Australia Day, to attempt to use Aboriginal people in a tawdry, deceitful fashion. Mr Albanese: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: you made a ruling the other day that people actually had to speak to the suspension. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is speaking to the substance of the motion—a motion she has no chance of getting the numbers for. The SPEAKER: I have been listening very carefully to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. While at times she almost seems to be leaving the substance of the motion, she does come back to why standing and sessional orders should be suspended. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will continue to address the motion before the chair. Ms JULIE BISHOP: Standing orders must be suspended because of the revelations overnight about the squalid culture in the Prime Minister's office, about how they sought to use Aboriginal people for tawdry, deceitful purposes. That sort of culture has no place in any public office, let alone the office of the Prime Minister. That is why standing orders must be suspended. To compound the error, this wretched series of events surrounding Australia Day, the Prime Minister gave a press conference—and that is the subject of the motion we propose to debate—to explain how and why this Aboriginal tent embassy protest came about. That public explanation by the Prime Minister now appears to be false. The Prime Minister was given the opportunity in question time today to correct the public record. The Prime Minister has relied in this House on the transcript of Ms Kim Sattler, but there is a contradiction between the transcript the Prime Minister relied upon and the actual words spoken by Ms Sattler. And the Prime Minister has refused to correct the record. That is why standing orders must be suspended—because this Prime Minister must explain to the House and to the Australian people why she has conducted herself in this way, so debasing the high office of Prime Minister. Take, for example, the fantasy the Prime Minister has invented about her conduct during the overthrow of the former Prime Minister. Standing orders should be suspended to debate the new revelations about that matter. This Prime Minister would have us believe that she was the reluctant candidate, drafted against her will into the challenge that she did not want to mount. This is important and it is why standing orders must be suspended—because the Australian people were deeply unsettled by the unprecedented removal of the former Prime Minister and they have been given no plausible explanation except naked, ruthless ambition. The problem for this Prime Minister is that her own colleagues and ministers are contradicting her version of events—a version of events invented by the Prime Minister and given to the public but which is the opposite of what actually happened. That is why cabinet ministers have been doing the numbers overnight. Standing orders must be suspended as there are fresh revelations reflecting on the Prime Minister which must be debated. Her office was drafting an acceptance speech for when she became Prime Minister at least two weeks prior to the challenge, yet the Prime Minister wants the public to believe that she knew nothing about the plot or the challenge that she was about to make. The US Secretary of State knew about the challenge two weeks before it occurred. The Australian ambassador in Washington was called in to give assurances to the United States that there would be no destabilisation of the relationship when there was a change of leader. Mr Slipper: The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will return to the substance of the motion. Ms JULIE BISHOP: This is a very serious allegation and that is why standing orders must be suspended—so that this issue of national security can be debated and so the Prime Minister can explain to the House how it is that she did not know her office was in fact drafting her acceptance speech. I wonder if they are now in there drafting her concession speech. The Prime Minister also said that she did not know that there was polling showing that she was the preferred Prime Minister over the then Prime Minister. Yet we now find from revelations overnight that the very person who was seeking to replace the former Prime Minister was personally campaigning and lobbying other members of her frontbench and backbench with that very same polling which was so damaging to the then Prime Minister and supportive of her campaign for the job. But the Australian people have been told that she did not have any recollection of these momentous events— The SPEAKER: The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will return to the substance of the motion. Ms JULIE BISHOP: and that is why standing orders must be suspended—because the truth is slowly and painfully being revealed by the Prime Minister's own colleagues. It is becoming obvious to all that the Prime Minister was up to her eyeballs in the coup to remove the former Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister should simply come into this House and tell the truth. What was her role in the removal of the Prime Minister? Did she know about the polling? She was handing it around. Did she know about the speech? The ambassador in Washington knew and the US Secretary of State knew. We know that the member for Denison holds in his hands a signed contract with the Prime Minister, the contract which supported the formation of this minority government and allowed this Prime Minister to remain in office. That contract turned to dust with no apology for the monumental deception played upon the member for Denison—and that is why standing orders must be suspended. The Prime Minister led the member for Denison on for months. And then there was the most blatant betrayal of the Australian people—the promise that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. These events are themselves serious enough to warrant a suspension of standing orders, a condemnation and censure, but of equal or greater concern is that the Prime Minister believes it is proper conduct to seek to mislead the Australian people with her improbable, implausible, disingenuous, unbelievable explanations and excuses. The devious conduct and personal behaviour of this Prime Minister calls into question her fitness to hold office. (Time expired) The SPEAKER: Is the motion seconded?