Turnbull government is getting stronger: Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has confronted critics who have accused the Turnbull government of being on its last legs.

Treasurer Scott Morrison at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Scott Morrison has confronted critics who have accused the Turnbull government of being on its last legs, describing them as “Chicken Littles” who appear intent on willing the Coalition to fail.

Addressing an audience of 100 of the party faithful at the Wombat Hollow Forum, run by former NSW Liberal minister Michael Yabsley, the Treasurer took aim at the commentariat for continually writing the government off ­despite it passing 134 pieces of legislation in a little over 100 days.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Mr Morrison told those at the monthly forum held in the NSW Southern Highlands.

“The number of times I have driven back down the Hume here, the Federal Highway, since the last election, and I have been going down there and have heard, ‘Oh, this is the week that the Turnbull government is going to come to grief. It is all going to end. They will never be able to work through this issue.’ On everything from the backpackers’ tax to sugar to super to whatever it happened to be, energy, climate change. ‘This is the week. It is all happening. It is all over. It is all going to crumble. They won’t be able to get through this.’

“Well, it happened again this week. Apparently it was going to be the end of the Turnbull government this week, again. And, yet again, the Chicken Little critics were proved wrong. And I am starting to wonder how many times people can credibly say this.”

In the address, delivered primarily to grassroots members, Mr Morrison argued that the bulk of the government’s 2017 budget had passed the Senate.

Without referencing the ­Abbott government, which had much of its legislation blocked, Mr Morrison said it had been able to get 134 pieces of legislation through a Senate that was argu­ably more eclectic and difficult than the last.

“After the last election, everyone said to us, ‘This Senate will be impossible. It will be a government that is there in theory but not in practice,’ ” he said.

“Well ... 134 pieces of legislation have been passed in just the last year. And another eight pieces that went through the parliament in just the last week, including things like making it illegal for a company to bribe a union official. That is a pretty significant change.

“How that was ever legal ­before is a tragedy in itself. But significant changes — 134 pieces of legislation in a Senate that apparently everyone said we would never be able to get anything through.

“On top of that we have had 19 pieces of budget legislation that have gone through since the budget itself. So this is a budget that is passing the allegedly impossible Senate.”

He said people may agree or disagree with what the government was doing but they couldn’t argue that it wasn’t doing ­anything.

“The amount of legislation passing; everything from the restoration of the ABCC, or the Registered Organisations Bill. Bills that we could not get through the previous parliament that we have got through this parliament. Actually, finally, getting agreement on funding for schools in this country and passing that legislation.

“Important national counter-terrorism legislation has passed the parliament and, as I said, just this week, just this past week, important legislation to criminalise paying bribes to union officials, which I am sorry to say ... was ­opposed by the Labor Party.

“This is a government that is getting things done when it comes to the important issues that Australia faces. I think what it says about us, as a government, is that what doesn’t kill us actually does make us stronger.”