Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

It is not often that members on the Labor side of the House rise to endorse statements made by those on the other side of the House, especially when those statements concern election results. Yesterday, the member for Moreton and Minister for Vocational and Technical Education told ABC radio listeners that the people of Queensland ‘got it right’ when they returned the Beattie Labor government last Saturday. That is not all that the minister had to say and it is not the only thing that he said that I want to endorse tonight. The minister told the ABC AM program:

Well, I mean the National Party should be really upset about their result. All they’ve done is win back a seat. They lost a half a dozen years ago, which they held for 60 years before that.

So it’s not much of a result for them and I think that one of the messages the National Party have got to get out of this election is to get the hell out of south-east Queensland.

I have to say that I almost choked when I was listening to the minister’s comments, so I can only imagine how his National Party colleagues must have felt.

Minister Hardgrave hails from Queensland, where just a few weeks ago the Liberal and National parties were announcing a merger plan, which was scuttled by the Prime Minister. What a great idea that was by the PM. The minister was not finished there, though. He was not just interested in the past; he was interested in the future. He had a clear message for the National Party, and the National Party should have a listen to what he said. This is what he told AM:

The reality is there will never be a National Party Premier in Queensland ever again, and the result over the weekend showed that.

Ouch! That has to hurt, the painful truth. For the record, I do not see any of the Liberals disagreeing, by the way. Finally, the minister urged his National Party colleagues to grow up and vacate the south-east corner of Queensland for the Liberals. You would think that perhaps somebody in the Labor Party said this, but, no, it was a Liberal minister.

Somewhat surprisingly, though, the National Party has not received the minister’s message very warmly. I say ‘surprisingly’ because the demise of the once great National Party is a matter of fact, not supposition. It is not just the numbers that spell out that reality; it is the quality of the people that they send to the parliament these days. Does anyone in Australia think that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is actually up to the job? Is anyone listening to him? Does anyone care? It could hardly be said that the National Party stands for anything anymore—or, for that matter, anyone anymore.

The party sold out its own people, its own constituency, on the sale of Telstra. It sold out its own people, its own constituency, on the matter of sugar in the free trade agreement with the United States. And now it has sold out its own constituency on the mandatory code of conduct for the horticulture industry. What is there left for the National Party? This was confirmed by Senator Ron Boswell—a bloke who used to take a bit of pride in the party—when he told AM that the National Party had stood by the Liberal Party ‘through thick and thin’—no matter what.

If the party instead had stood with the people who voted for them, the people who they are supposed to represent, rather than just sticking to the Liberal Party through thick and thin, then they would not be facing the oblivion they are facing today. It is only a matter of time. All that the few remaining National Party members in this place can do is deny reality. The member for Dawson has meekly responded to the minister’s comments by saying ‘cheap pot shots from federal Liberals are really unhelpful’. I am sure that is right.

In a delicious irony, though, the member for Dawson lost her place in the ministry because her National Party colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s brother in the Senate, walked out of the party room. When he was walking out of the party room door into the arms of the Liberals, Senator Julian McGauran said that there is ‘no longer any real distinguishing policy or philosophical difference between The Nationals and the Liberal Party at the federal level’. Oh, dear! What will they admit to next? There has been some recent speculation that the minister for agriculture would join his brother in the Liberal Party room—rats deserting a sinking ship or is it just the perks that keep them going? You decide.

As far as Australia’s farmers are concerned, there is already a Liberal in the job. The minister for agriculture acts like a Liberal, he talks like a Liberal and he votes like a Liberal. He even ushered the Telstra sale legislation through like a Liberal! Not wanting to make any jokes of a poultry nature, if it walks like a duck and it squawks like a duck—everyone knows how the rest of it goes. The National Party of Australia is a spent political force, not just because the member for Moreton says so but because its own people say so. (Time expired)

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