Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

You know that is not right. I have always had great respect for you. You also know, as has occurred on previous occasions, that my door has always been open to you—always—if in fact you have ever wanted to speak to me about various issues. I am involved as we all are in an extraordinary number of meetings on a whole range of issues, and I am not saying this is the first time that you have mentioned it, but the first time I have heard that the shadow minister has an arrangement he would like to speak to the Independents about was when he was speaking this morning.

I have been in negotiations for some time with the minister and the minister's office about these issues, because they are substantive issues and there are some very real questions that a number of people have been trying to find answers to. But for the shadow minister to suddenly raise the compromise, knowing full well—as all members of the opposition would know, and many of them walked through that door—that if he was really interested in a compromise he could have come and discussed it with me. Given the respect I have had for him—and I still do—one has to question the motives. What is the point of raising these issues in a vitriolic fashion if you are trying to convince someone who has not made up their mind on this particular issue to support you? The reaction that I think most people would have is that you are more interested in the issue than the solution to it. If you were interested in the solution to it and there were a compromise, I would have thought that the shadow minister—and you have not been a precious person in the past, where position puts you on a pedestal where everybody has to come and bow down in front of you; you are not like that. What is the point of raising these issues in such a vitriolic fashion when you know full well that you do not know how I am going to vote? The minister has no idea how I am going to vote. But your contribution—

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