Tony Burke Quotes

The claim that the Government made that there were 21 measures in it is wrong. We said we wanted to wait till we saw the bill because we didn't to trust that it would be as they described and it's turned out we were exactly right for saying that. The Government has been entirely deceptive with this. And if their first action is to lie to the Australian people about what was meant to be their centrepiece bill, that really tells you want the [Malcolm] Turnbull Government's going to be about.

With a close parliament, if the Government wants to get a good outcome for the nation, they can't play a game of lying to the public about what's in their own legislation. They can't do that.

There are serious budgetry issues that need to be worked through. Playing a game of lying about what's in the content of legislation isn't going to get them anywhere.

The Government in their own terms, for example, they banked the income for the backpackers' tax. But they had a process attached to the backpackers' tax of review that they wanted to go through. What the Government's saying now with this bill is any process, any detail, any reinvestment that Labor had as part of its package, we're meant to ignore all of that and it's only the cut part of it that we're meant to be committed to.

It's a bit much describing it as a moral challenge from a government that's tripled the deficit and added $100 billion to net debt.

Malcolm Turnbull, more than anyone, changes month to month on a range of issues.

The truth is I was Labor's last immigration minister and you have a right to hear directly from me about what that job involved, the choices that involved and how that lends us to think very carefully when we use words like 'compassion, [that] we actually know the exact context.

We're going to prevent politics from abusing the parliament and going off playing politics around the country when they should be here at work.

Malcolm Turnbull got a majority in the parliament that he is trying to ignore and lock his own members of parliament into positions that they don't hold, and sometimes into positions that we know he doesn't hold. It's no wonder the public's started turning on him.

The challenge we've got is that the Government does not have a working majority. They don't.

No doubt, you've got a parliament now - I mean, Malcolm Turnbull says he'll work with the parliament he's got. He's got a parliament where a majority of the members of parliament want that law to be changed. He's got a parliament where there's a majority in each House who have publicly said they want to have a Royal Commission into banks.