Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. But surely this Prime Minister would draw the line at allowing her office, the office of Prime Minister, to become tainted by the suggestion that it is engaged in black operations to damage the Leader of the Opposition. The Australia Day riot was no idle matter. It was the most serious breach of a Prime Minister's security since the Fraser government. No-one enjoyed seeing the Prime Minister in a headlock, dragged downstairs and along a path, chased by an angry mob, shoved in the back of a car and losing a shoe in the process. Nobody enjoyed that. It was shocking, it was terrible and it was humiliating both for the Prime Minister and for Australia as these images were flashed around the world.

If anyone should want to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding this unfortunate event, it should be the Prime Minister. If anybody should want to get rid of the lingering stench that hangs over this government because of the actions of her staff on Australia Day, it should be the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister is to have any credibility in the future, she should want to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding the most serious security breach to a Prime Minister since the Fraser government. And yet it took the opposition to refer this matter to the Australian Federal Police, having given the Prime Minister four days in which to do the right thing and refer it to them. In the teeth of inaction on the Prime Minister's part, the opposition acted.

Too many questions remain unanswered about this matter for it to simply go away. Let me go through them. What precisely did the Prime Minister's staff say to Kim Sattler on Australia Day that would have led her to instigate the subsequent events? If the Prime Minister expects us to believe that her staff relayed Mr Abbott's words exactly, why did Kim Sattler write on Facebook and in an email to 3AW that Mr Abbott had suggested the tent embassy be cleared? Did Mr Hodges speak to any other activists?

See this speech in context