Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Life is sometimes full of certain symmetries, and today’s speech on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills has a symmetry with the very first speech I gave in this parliament nearly 11 years ago. It was an appropriation speech, my first in the House. My wife, Shirley, is with me tonight, as she was then, for the last appropriation speech I will make in this House.

Many people are no doubt aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, as you are aware, that I will not be the ALP candidate for the seat of Blaxland at the next election. When preselection for Blaxland was announced, a good friend wisely advised that I should do what Paul Keating counselled Bob Carr to do at one stage: stand in the middle of the road and dare them to run me over. It is sad to report that I am but political road kill. This is a matter of great sorrow, of course, and regret not just for me but for everyone in Blaxland who has so strongly supported me since I was preselected by popular rank and file ballot in May 1996. My loyal branch members will recall that I won the ballot emphatically with 131 out of 205 votes, 64 per cent of the primary vote. The other 74 votes were pretty evenly split between the other two candidates.

During the last 10 years, despite a truly massive campaign of ethnic branch stacking against me and despite the recent electoral redistribution in the seat of Blaxland being deliberately designed to cut out my power base in Condell Park, I would still have convincingly won a rank and file preselection in Blaxland. I know this because I did the numbers and I can count. I proved that conclusively in 1996 by predicting the exact result of that rank and file ballot.

Most of the other Labor seats in New South Wales have been allowed to have rank and file ballots, but not Blaxland. Taking the decision out of the hands of qualified local branch members and putting it into the hands of the national executive was deliberately done to stop me being preselected again. Despite this process being chosen, I was offered and accepted another three years as the member for Blaxland on condition that Ms Tania Mihailuk would replace me in three years time, that I withdraw the existing two charges against her and not put in the further charges and that, together with the member for Bankstown, I help to rehabilitate her locally.

These were very demanding conditions, given what Ms Mihailuk had done over the past decade and given that I did not believe that she would ever be fit for any public office. But I was not in a position to determine the outcome of a national executive vote, so I very unwillingly agreed to this compromise. This deal was then put to Ms Mihailuk. She flatly refused to wait another three years and demanded that she be made the preselected ALP candidate for Blaxland immediately. Three ALP participants in this process have independently corroborated Ms Mihailuk’s refusal to accept the compromise deal.

Another candidate was then asked to nominate, but Ms Mihailuk was given until the next day to convince me to give up in her favour. Despite a series of stratagems, she could not do so and could not have done so until hell froze over. I made it absolutely clear that I had accepted the compromise under great duress but would honour it even if no-one else would. I made it utterly plain to ALP head office that Ms Mihailuk should not profit from the decade of deceit, illegality and destructiveness she had unleashed in the seat of Blaxland. I was determined that if I were denied the right to continue to represent Blaxland for the ALP then the author and perpetrator of so much disloyalty towards me and towards genuine rank and file members should not become my successor in the seat of Blaxland.

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