Andrew Wilkie wouldn’t recognise a pimple on his own nose. But Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor just might. This is what they should be saying:
After the general election I believed the interests of my electorate, and the people of Australia, would best be served by a Labor government.
I was wrong.
This government has been the most inept in Australia’s history. Its major projects and policy announcements have been a series of expensive and embarrassing failures.
Whatever you may think of the carbon and mining taxes as policy, the government has no mandate for them, and in the case of the carbon tax, can only introduce it by breaking a clear pre-election promise.
The government’s reluctance to act over allegations involving the member for Dobell have made it clear that the leadership of the Labor Party is more concerned with holding onto power than with justice, or the rights of ordinary Australian workers.
Anthony Albanese’s description of hundreds of truck drivers and their families and supporters as ‘the convoy of no consequence,’ demonstrated the contempt the Labor Party feels for the concerns and aspirations of Australian families and small business owners.
A government can only function fairly and effectively if it governs with the consent of the people. The Labor Party has lost the right to claim that consent.
As a result, I have to announce that I intend to support the Leader of the Opposition in a motion of no confidence in the government.
Not only would Oakeshott and Windsor be doing the right thing, and earning the gratitude of the entire country, this is the only conceivable way their own political careers have any chance of continuing past the next election.
