Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I am reading a transcript.

TONY ABBOTT: “Of course. Obviously you want to look at the files and all that kind of stuff.”

That is the question which was put to him by Bill Shorten in that interview, and that was the response of the Leader of the House. That is the transcript. So you ask with this feigned innocence and indignation why we in the opposition might dare suspect that you guys might be up to no good. I think there is a reasonable basis for looking at that.

Furthermore, when you look at the other matters which have been put into the public debate on all of this, the other matter which was canvassed today in a question goes to the report by Hedley Thomas in the Australian. The report by Hedley Thomas is quite explicit:

Liberal Party figures in Queensland, including a forensic accountant, have been examining the purchase, and the links between the vendors—

referring to the purchase of a house by my wife and me—

and the Labor Party’s investment companies, for several months.

If that is in the public record and it is there from Hedley Thomas, who is a longstanding journalist with News Ltd, it is equally legitimate to put this matter for the government to seek a response to. But, on top of that, is the government saying that Jason Koutsoukis lies through his teeth—this is the term of art used by those opposite? Jason Koutsoukis, only a couple of weeks ago or less, details precisely his visit to a ministerial suite to be handed a file which has ‘Gillard’ on the top and deals explicitly with a whole series of allegations concerning the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. And you sit there opposite believing you are purer than the driven snow. It is remarkable—the feigned indignation about these questions, including from Captain Courageous over there, the would-be Prime Minister without any intestinal fortitude whatsoever to ever stand up to the plate and say: ‘I would like to be Prime Minister. I would like to have the guts to challenge the Prime Minister. But—oops!—I’ll step back from the plate again.’ Always privately lacking courage and lacking conviction, always whispering behind people’s backs but never with the fortitude, the conviction, to stand up to the plate and actually challenge the government’s leader, the leader of the Liberal Party, for his job.

Debate interrupted; adjournment proposed and negatived.

Then we have the question that concerns the activities of those in the government dirt unit, which we have already referred to in detail concerning Dr Phelps, the chief of staff of the Special Minister of State. The truth of these propositions—and I have only been through three of them: the Koutsoukos article, the Hedley Thomas article, the confession by Tony Abbott in the Sunday Telegraph, as well as all these related matters—points to the fact that these matters should be answered by the Leader of the House or the government itself.

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