Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me no particular pleasure to follow the member for Lilley with his nervous, rehearsed performance and his clenching of one of his fists. Obviously, it is something he practised this morning. As we know from other comments on the public record, he likes to stand in front of the mirror and practise. But, quite strangely, he talked about trust and interest rates. He knows that, under the former Labor government, interest rates were at least 4½ per cent higher. He remembers all too well the 17 per cent interest rates. But let us think about this: trust and the member for Lilley. How can the Australian people trust to be Treasurer of Australia a man who hands over money to an alternative political party in a brown paper bag? He has gall and he has no shame—he is an absolute embarrassment not just to himself but also to the Labor Party.

We heard the Leader of the Opposition talking about governance of political parties and claiming that the government cannot govern itself. Let us have a look behind some of those sentiments about the governing of political parties. Let us remind ourselves, yet again, just in case we may have forgotten, who actually governs and controls the Labor Party. We have had Kevin Rudd say, ‘We are unapologetic, completely, about our strong links with organised labour,’ and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in parliament say, ‘We do the job that the ACTU would expect us to do.’ What sort of people are these union mandarins, these union officials, who control the Labor Party and who say, ‘I need a mum or dad, someone who has been seriously injured or killed; that would be fantastic’? These are the sorts of people who control the Labor Party. We have seen a former leader of the Labor Party, the member for Hotham, totally fail when he tried to reform the internal preselection structures of the union movement.

But for a real insight into the workings, the dysfunctionality and the political inbreeding of the Labor Party, we only have to go to the very comprehensive chronicles of the Latham Diaries. They provide us with some insight into why the Labor Party have been a poor opposition, why the Labor Party have not done the basic job and taken the basic responsibility that they owe the democratic system—that is, to be an opposition and to hold the government accountable for 11 years. Why is it so? Because they are obsessed by their own power plays within their own party. Mark Latham said:

The faction bosses see power as an end in its own right, a chance to dispense patronage and entrench their position at the top of the party hierarchy. They see policy as a vehicle to achieve power, not as a reform tool for a better society—

and, dare I add, for better working conditions for families—

The methodology is simple. Use the opinion polls and focus groups to find out what the public thinks and tell them we think exactly the same way.

In other words, the Labor Party’s words and actions are false—deliberately crafted, deliberately choreographed, to fool the Australian public into thinking that they truly represent the aspirations of the diverse people that make up the Australian electorate. In Mark Latham’s words, and if we look at some of the policy history of members opposite, we find that they do not represent the Australian electorate. Why? Because fewer than 17 per cent of the workforce in the private sector are unionised, and we see that the opposition frontbench is littered with the dregs of the trade union movement. Parliament has become the knackery for the trade union bosses and for those whose strings they pull.

But Mark Latham did give us an insight into the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd. He told us that the health minister said, ‘He has no friends in this place.’ That is perhaps not because he is obsessed too much with other factions—not too many people wanted to support him in other factions until they got extremely desperate—but because, after regurgitating the member for Brand and after trying the experiment with the former member for Werriwa, they thought: ‘We’re desperate; there’s no-one left. We may as well give this poor lonely man a go.’ Why is that? Let us have a look at what Mr Latham said about Mr Rudd. He said:

Today Rudd was even worse. At 9.15 am he played a role in drafting the troops’ resolution at shadow cabinet. But at 5 pm at the national Right meeting after Robert Ray attacked the wording, Rudd stood up and disowned it, calling it hopeless. I am still shaking my head in disbelief that it was the same person at both meetings. He is an incredible piece of work.

I do not think Mr Latham used the word ‘incredible’ in a complimentary manner in that instance.

What else did he have to say? He recalls a situation where Kevin Rudd went to see him, lobbying him to be shadow Treasurer:

He went into a long explanation of why he is so wonderful. When he finished I put my cards on the table that I regard him as disloyal and unreliable and he only holds his frontbench position because of his media profile and public standing among people who have never actually met him.

He goes on—it makes for fascinating reading. It has reminded me that perhaps that is something I will do during the break, when parliament rises at the end of the week. We have an opposition leadership team that is not only the knackery for the trade union movement, that is not only filled with those who do not represent the demographics and the aspirations of the Australian people but that is also false and fake. If they look at governing themselves they should actually start with the power base of the Labor Party—that is, the trade union movement. They have got people like Joe McDonald. Remember the man who said, ‘I’ll be back when f’ing Kevin Rudd gets in’? These people are full of hatred and loathing, not only for mainstream Australia—and the word ‘mainstream’ is a word that I am sure is not used that often in the Labor Party caucus. They have a disdain not only for mainstream Australia but for each other and for the myriad of factions that exist.

This is a disingenuous and misleading MPI from a cocky and smarmy opposition leader. The Leader of the Opposition talks about being concerned for working families, but we know—just as with his falseness in dealing with his own party—these crocodile tears are just another charade. I wonder where his concern was for the families of those 58 individuals whom the Leader of the Opposition’s wife’s business underpaid. Where was his for his concern for those families? Where was his concern for the family who operates the Lilac City Motor Inn in Goulburn?

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