Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

Mark it down in your diaries: Monday, 29 May 2006, the day that the once great Australian Country Party simply curled up into a shell and died. The only thing that has happened is that the friends and relatives are now having a dispute over what should be in the formal content of the funeral notice. But let us make no bones about it: this party is no more. Despite all the hollering and hooting from all those up there in cocky corner, there has been a death in the Australian political family: ‘RIP Australian Country Party. Born 22 January 1920. Died 29 May 2006. Aged 86 years. Sadly missed by Mark and the kids.’

This is what has happened to the once great Australian Country Party. The party of Black Jack McEwen is reduced to what we have seen today—this pathetic, squabbling, comatose cadaver, twitching quietly in the corner before it finally shuffles off its mortal coil. The only one with any dispute about this is, of course, the Deputy Prime Minister himself. The Deputy Prime Minister reminds me so much of that bloke in Monty Python who says, ‘But I’m not dead yet!’ Remember that? The problem, Mark, is this: Doug Anthony says you are dead.

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