Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. The pork-barrelling in New England has cranked up a notch or two. From the Hunter electorate you can smell the pork! This is the question: if the Prime Minister is so confident about the decision of the High Court, why is the Deputy Prime Minister currently already campaigning for a New England by-election? The other great thing about representing the Hunter electorate—the neighbouring electorate to New England—is that people talk. People talk to the member in the neighbouring electorate and what they are telling me is that, suddenly, they're seeing the member for New England. For the first time in three years, the member for New England is turning up. In fact, he's going to the opening of an envelope. After years of doing nothing, he's ramping up the campaign in New England. And why is he ramping up the campaign in New England? It's because, like the Prime Minister, he knows that his chances of running the gauntlet in the High Court are very poor indeed. The reason the Prime Minister will not table the Solicitor-General's advice is that he knows that it's not as strong as he's making out it is. The Deputy Prime Minister should stand aside.

What do we know about this case? We know that he was a New Zealand citizen. We know that he was a dual citizen. We know what section 44 says. We know that the Prime Minister himself doesn't believe he can win the High Court case. We know that Senator Canavan's case was already providing the Prime Minister with the guidance he needed to determine the fate of section 44. But all he was concerned about was the fate of the Deputy Prime Minister. Why? We know why. It's because, unlike Senator Canavan, the Deputy Prime Minister sits in this place, a place where this Prime Minister desperately needs every vote he can muster—as we saw earlier in the week, where he relied on the vote of the Deputy Prime Minister to survive a vote in this place.

So we know why the Prime Minister is misleading—or, should I say, embellishing—on the Solicitor-General's advice. We understand why he is clinging like death to the Deputy Prime Minister. It's because his whole prime ministership rests on it. What we don't know is why the Deputy Prime Minister is hanging on. But I think we know the answer to that question in part. We know that when he travelled to Canberra to share the bad news with the Prime Minister, he came down here with every intention of resigning and going to a by-election in New England. But the Prime Minister said, 'Oh no; there won't be any of that, because I need your vote in the House of Representatives to survive. You are not going anywhere, and I don't care how embarrassed you are.'

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