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

Corangamite—that is right. Corio is on our side. He is a good bloke. What I love about Corangamite is that everybody in the country has seen you in your little tank helmet, out there pitching for a bid that was taken out of the running by the government. That is pretty embarrassing, I would have thought. Maybe you can explain that for me. I thought you were supposed to be an up-and-comer and a clever backbencher, but backing in a bid that the government skewers is a bad look, isn't it? I was talking a bit before—

Ms Henderson interjecting—

I wait to be informed by you in the next speech! But here is the thing: I was thinking about Ricky Muir. What a good bloke Ricky Muir was. You could talk cars with him and he seemed to be a pretty sensible fellow. He took a long time before he spoke in the parliament. That perhaps was a sign of good judgement. He got a bit of stick about it, but it might have been a sign of good judgement, because what we have now on the conservative crossbench is this kaleidoscope of colour and movement that you get with Senator Xenophon's party, which is named after him. I note that he is committed to changing its title sometime soon. I doubt that will happen, really. It is a personality cult. Its representations are ciphers for his opinions. We know with Senator Xenophon that he can change his mind at a moment's notice—just like that, with a snap of the fingers. He stood up in the Senate and backed in the TWU's Safe Rates campaign. He quoted a widow in his speech supporting it. Then, of course, a different section of the community, business, got to him and he changed his mind straight back and voted completely the opposite way—and he has done the same thing here. We have to hear about how he is the great hero of workers, backing apprenticeships, opposing overseas workers, promoting Australian made goods and against asbestos. Yet, in this bill, he removes every single mechanism for workers to defend themselves and campaign on those issues or do something about those issues. He removes every single legal facility for them to have safe workplaces, make sure there are apprenticeship ratios, make sure there is consultation on 457 visas and make sure they do not have to work with asbestos. For all of his talk, what do we see from Senator Xenophon's party? We see a cipher for big business.

We see the same thing with Senator Hinch. It is impossible not to like Senator Hinch's persona on the TV. We all remember him from our youth. I am not saying he has done everything wrong, but he is wandering around the Senate in a dazed and confused fashion and no-one really knows which way he will go. Now he has voted one way before Christmas and another way after Christmas. We have One Nation rolling around this country, you know, talking to the workers.

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