Grog notices Hartsuyker's underwhelming performance

Nice to know that other bloggers notice the often inane performance of the Nationals Member for Cowper, Luke Hartsuyker during Question Time in the Federal House of Representatives.

Here is Greg Jericho over at Grog's Gamut on the subject last Wednesday........

Late in the session Luke Hartsuyker got up to make sure Hockey’s question wasn’t the dopiest of the day:

Mr HARTSUYKER (2.53 pm)—My question is to the Prime Minister. On 31 March 2009, thousands of residents in my electorate of Cowper were severely impacted by a major flood event. Despite the flood being declared a natural disaster, the government never provided victims with one-off Centrelink disaster payments of $1,000 per adult and $400 per child. Will the Prime Minister now ensure that people who suffered a substantial loss as a result of the floods of 31 March receive those payments and be exempted from the government’s flood tax?

Yep, Hartsuyker wants people whose houses were flooded in a previous financial year to be exempted from paying a levy in the next financial year. And these people who he wants exempted are those who did not even qualify for disaster relief in that previous financial year! Geez, if we let them get out of paying, we’ll be having to exempt people who were around for the 1956 floods in South Australia.

It’s not that such a question is so dumb that is astonishing, it’s that it got through the Liberal’s tactics committee. Unfortunately for Hartsuyker, the Primer Minister had had enough of playing nice, and she danced down the pitch and put this ball somewhere in the upper deck of the stands:

Ms GILLARD—I thank the member for his question and I am very happy to answer it and, as I answer it, to clear up what is clearly becoming a set of misapprehensions on behalf of the opposition which I do not think we should allow to run unchallenged. The guidelines under the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements are the same guidelines operated by the Howard government.

Eww, don’t you hate it when it turns out the Howard Government did the same thing…

They are the guidelines that the Leader of the Opposition called on me just before Christmas to make sure applied to natural disasters this summer. So any question about the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements guidelines we are operating are the very guidelines the Leader of the Opposition called on me to have for natural disasters this summer.

Oops. Nice one Luke, I’m betting Abbott just loves being used as a baseball bat with which to slap you around the head.

I know consistency of purpose is not the Leader of the Opposition’s strong suit, so if he has changed his mind—other than on the question of additional assistance for people in Cyclone Larry that he has raised in parliament today and raised in the Sunday newspapers—generally about the architecture of natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements and he now believes, as the questioning of his members would seem to imply, that they should extend to meeting all losses sustained by every business and every householder then the Leader of the Opposition should say that, we will have it costed for him and he should nominate matching savings. I think he is going to find that pretty hard to do.

Ouch. A question on people being exempted from paying the “flood tax” becomes a tool for Gillard to slap down Abbott for being one to go back on his word. This answer needs a point of order quick smart:

Mr Hartsuyker—Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I would like the Prime Minister to be directly relevant to the question, which related to the Centrelink disaster payments that existed in 2009.

Good of Hartsuyker to ram home the illogical aspect of his question. It was 2009 Luke, let it go!!!