John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Instead of announcing inquiries, we actually announced proposals—we actually announced a plan or a policy. If the Leader of the Opposition had been thinking about nurses, he would have announced another inquiry, and he would no doubt have had that spokesman from the Nursing Federation that attacked our proposal as the first person to fill a position on the inquiry so he would know what was the result. I do not want to bore the House, but this list goes on and on. Can I say that in Australian politics at the present time there is only one list longer than this and that is the list of the former trade union officials that will constitute the federal parliamentary Labor Party, irrespective of the result, after the next federal election.

See this speech in context