Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to reflect on what I thought was a quite undignified spectacle today, about which I hope, on reflection, there will be some regret. I will preface my comments by saying this. Senator Wright and I go back, in the loosest sense, to her days in Ballarat and we do share that aspect. But it was an undignified spectacle today when a new member of this place had to stand up and justify their appointment. What we saw today was one candidate being forced by her leadership to justify her appointment, when the person who should be in the role and who was then sitting behind me, Senator Humphries, had no such requirement to justify his record and his role because his record stood for itself. I hope that Senator Bob Brown reflects on this undignified spectacle today. I hope Senator Brown reflects on what he has forced one of his own to do—to stand up in this chamber and read out her CV to justify this very grubby deal. Senator Brown—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—if that is the way you are going to conduct yourself in this chamber and if that is the pressure that you are going to put your own members under, then I think you need to very much reflect on what has occurred today.

There have been a number of discussions, quite rightly, about the utter hypocrisy of the Australian Greens, but I do not want to repeat those comments. What I do want to talk about today is not those who sit at the other end of the chamber but those who sit opposite us. I say to the Australian Labor Party: are you aware of the extraordinary damage that you are doing to yourselves with this unholy alliance? I know a number of people on the other side of the chamber—not down the other end but on the other side of the chamber—who do not support the Greens' four pillars and do not support the Greens' desire for death duties, and we can run through all their loopy economic policies.