Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, a conspiracy theory. Adelaide’s main paper, the Advertiser, has a confidential page, a very successful social page. There was recently a spread on my friend Peter Malinauskas at the races with his new girlfriend. Even more bizarrely, the member for Mayo claimed:

Yesterday, there was a great spread in the Advertiser about the secretary of the SDA, the key union in the Right faction, with his love life posted all over the Advertiserall part of the management of the faction, of course.

I find this an absolutely bizarre claim. When you reflect on it, there is probably a bit of personal jealousy in the attack on the part of the member for Mayo. He is probably desperate to get into the confidential pages of the Adelaide Advertiser, desperate to be part of Adelaide’s A list. I do not think he is likely to get there. It is pretty hard to get into the gossip pages if you are short, portly and boring.

To return to the contrived attack that we are all part of some machine that is linked to student unions, I think it is just a falsehood, it is a fantasy, but it is also chapter 2 out of the conservative dirty tricks handbook. It is all about making us part of some privileged elite that seeks to use the state, student unions and other things for our own benefit. It is an unfair attack. Just for the record, there is no link between any of us from our uni days. We went to different campuses at different times, and we had different results. I think the member for Mayo misleads the public and abuses privilege in what is a pretty despicable partisan attack. I am not so much fussed about the attacks on me, the member for Adelaide or the member for Kingston, but I do take exception on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves in this House, in particular, Peter Malinauskas and Rob Malinauskas.

The member for Mayo ignores the real link between us as individuals, which is, firstly, our commitment to the cause of Labor and, secondly, the fact that we had real jobs. University was not the defining time in my life. The defining times in my life were when I was a fruit picker or a station hand or when I worked as a cleaner or a trolley collector. I know that the defining time in the life of the member for Adelaide was when she worked for seven years as a checkout operator in Arrow supermarkets in Edwardstown. One of the critical times in the member for Kingston’s life was when she worked for Toys’R’Us and was offered an ‘individual contract’—it was a sort of take it or leave it deal. And, just for the record, Peter Malinauskas worked for years doing night-fill at Woolies at Mitcham. Rob Malinauskas was a cadet reporter for the Advertisera job that prepared him for his new role as press secretary to the Deputy Premier, which the member for Mayo referred to in his contribution. Tom Koutsantonis worked as a taxi driver. Senator Don Farrell worked at a kiosk in Cleland Wildlife Park and also as a waiter in Darwin.

That is the link: we all had real jobs, working for real employers in the real world. We know from experience what it is like for working people. I would have been inclined to let some of the comments stand if they had come from the member for Hume, who was an ex-meatworker. If someone like that had made an attack on us because we all came from student unions, I would have been inclined not to reply. But the member for Mayo went straight from university to Business SA.

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