Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Let us hear about this. You would think that the coalition would backtrack on this a little bit because we know that the member for Indi, another shadow cabinet minister, this morning on the doors made a similar comparison that the shadow health minister made in respect of me and Colonel Gaddafi yesterday. This morning, the shadow minister for industry and innovation, the member for Indi, made the comparison between the Prime Minister and Colonel Gaddafi.

The Leader of the Opposition was asked about this and he said, ‘It is not the sort of language I would use.’ The interviewer asked, ‘Will you have a talk to the member for Indi?’ and he said, ‘Oh, we’ll have a talk to the member for Indi.’ You would think, having declared that he would have a bit of a chat to the member for Indi, that the last thing that she would do after that time had elapsed is put out another press release—this is beyond going on the doors this morning—where she said, ‘If Ms Gillard believes that under her carbon tax Australian jobs and manufacturing will be better off, she, the Prime Minister, is as deluded as Colonel “My people love me” Gaddafi.’

The comparison was also made by Senator Abetz, who in my memory is the coalition opposition leader in the Senate. This is a pattern. You see this pattern with the opposition leader where he says, ‘It was not me; they might have gone a little bit too far,’ but in fact he is behind it. This comes out of central casting, the opposition leader’s office, but he does not have the basic guts to say, ‘Yeah, that’s me; I am quite happy to stand by that,’ because he lacks courage.

See this speech in context