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

In terms of misrepresentation about the existence of a dirt unit, it is extraordinary that the Leader of the House could stand in the chamber and say that it does not exist when, out of his own mouth, he says that it does. The question put to him by Bill Shorten was:

Tony, are you saying you don’t have a dirt unit and it doesn’t have people trying to scour up the backgrounds of Labor candidates?

The answer was then:

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

What has happened here is, of course, that the Leader of the House has been hoist with his own petard, hung out by the words that have proceeded from his own mouth, confirming, less than a month ago—on Melbourne radio, I presume—that in fact this dirt unit does exist and engages in that sort of activity.

The feigned indignation becomes much wider than that. Let us remember a certain individual called Senator Heffernan. The Prime Minister has made reference to all these indignations in the past. Prime Minister, you have a responsibility when it comes to either backing or overturning remarks by Senator Heffernan. What did Senator Heffernan have to say about the Deputy Leader of the Opposition? And what did you say in response to that immediately? ‘But look, I’m not telling people what they should apologise for or not; I’m just stating my own view.’ In other words, when that foul language was used by Senator Heffernan in relation to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, what the Prime Minister sought to do was quickly step to one side—’Nothing to do with me; it’s old Bill there, running off the tracks. I don’t have anything to do with that.’ Then what happens? The heat gets too much, the political reaction around the country gets too solid and suddenly the Prime Minister has to change his tune later on. The reason we moved an amendment earlier on, which the government was not prepared to take, was that all these questions go to the absolute heart of the integrity of the operations of this government.

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