David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the benefit of the parliament, and for the great respect I have for the Deputy Speaker and the office that you hold, I was quoting an article and the comment that followed the quote merely reinforced what had already been quoted from the article. To the extent that I have said something that offends someone because it is not true, then I certainly withdraw that. I wish to continue to quote the article:

According to senior Liberals, it was Mr Abbott who suggested the Chaser defence during a strategy conference early on that day the story broke.

His advice was rejected on the grounds that the leaflet was deeply offensive and could not be dismissed as a prank.

I would have thought that that was an entirely reasonable conclusion for one to draw in those circumstances, notwithstanding the position at least asserted to be Mr Abbott’s position so far as this article is concerned. The article goes on to say that when Mr Abbott was asked about this he said about Jackie Kelly:

“Jackie’s a great mate of mine, and the Warringah Conference (Mr Abbott’s fund-raising arm) bankrolled to the Lindsay campaign.”

In the context of the discussion about integrity in democratic processes, I am disturbed by that comment because one of the unanswered questions not only through the various criminal proceedings that were undertaken in relation to this matter but also in the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into these matters was where these leaflets came from. Who printed these leaflets? I know that there is a lot of speculation going around, and there has been for the last couple of years, that they may well have been printed using taxpayers’ dollars. To one of those that has seen these leaflets, it does appear that they were produced using something along the lines of a Risograph machine. Were any taxpayer dollars used to fund these pamphlets? If taxpayer dollars were not used, then I think, given the quote I have just read out that Mr Abbott’s fundraising arm bankrolled the campaign in Lindsay, it begs the question whether there was any connection between the funds that were provided by Mr Abbott and his electoral conference and the conduct that was the subject of these criminal prosecutions—that is, the Lindsay leaflet scandal. I think this is a question that should be answered. It is a question that I have been asking for the last two years, but I think it is of even greater importance not just in the context of the current debate about integrity and democratic processes but also now that the member for Warringah is the Leader of the Opposition.

These are unanswered questions. I would be horrified if public dollars—taxpayer dollars—were used to print or produce this material—I think we all would be. But if it was not produced using taxpayer dollars then I think it is incumbent upon Mr Abbott, after the disclosure that he made in this article that it was his electoral conference that bankrolled the Lindsay campaign, to come forward—

See this speech in context