Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Let me begin with a couple of observations. First of all, the way the Leader of the Opposition is increasingly slipping into personal abuse and denigration rather than debating an issue on its merits is, I think, a sad reflection of the decline in his standards. When he was the Leader of the Opposition before, in the earlier period of his leadership, he used to pride himself on his decency. Since he has resumed the role of Leader of the Opposition—no doubt out of a sense of some desperation—he has abandoned that strategy. Somebody has told him to be offensive and rude to people and to reduce standards to the level that they used to be when the Labor Party was last in government. Apparently, the Labor Party strategists think that is going to work. My assessment of the Australian public is that it has not got a hope in hell of working.

The second observation I would make is that the only reason we are able to debate this issue is that, with our allies, the British, whose Prime Minister is here today, and the United States, we were able to get rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime and bring an end to the sanctions regime. That, I would have thought, was quite a relevant issue, bearing in mind that the Labor Party opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

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