Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Queensland National Party have hung up the ‘For sale’ sign. I do not mean they have hung up the ‘For sale’ sign like they used to, when in the good old days with a brown paper you could guarantee yourself a rezoning or a new development or for the right amount of money you could get yourself a knighthood. What I am talking about here is the full sale—not like it used to be; that was more ‘Rent the National Party’ rather than ‘Buy the National Party’. This is actually the wholesale purchase. For this you get the buildings, the property, the funds and the membership. The whole lot is on the selling block. It has been an extraordinary couple of days watching the events unfold.

The front-page article in today’s Brisbane Courier Mail referred to the meeting to be held this evening. From reports late this evening, I am sure the meeting occurred and we will no doubt get the details confirming this. The paper said:

Mr Howard will meet Queensland Liberal MPs tonight and declare his total opposition to a single party, unless the Nationals want to join the existing Liberals. While no decision has been made on the structure and name of the merged party, a leaked briefing to the Liberal members from the state director, Geoff Green, outlines the effective takeover of the Nationals.

I quote from the circular from the Liberal Party’s director:

The merger would not form a new conservative party in Queensland. Rather, talks are centring on the Nationals joining the Liberal Party.

It is a wholesale purchase of the National Party by the Liberal Party. What an astounding set of circumstances. As someone from Queensland who, I have to confess, has followed state politics closely for a few years now, I would never have thought I would see the occasion where the National Party in Queensland would fold its tent and desert its basic supporters.

It has now got to the stage where the Leader of the National Party in this place, Mark Vaile, who found out about these goings-on well after the handshake had taken place and the deal was sealed, has now publicly called for the federal President of the National Party—a Queenslander, David Russell—to resign because David Russell has gone behind the leader’s back to negotiate this arrangement. It is a matter of public record that the deal between the Liberal Party and the National Party was negotiated by David Russell, as the federal president, and by the state president, who is a member of this parliament—the member for Maranoa.

I watched with some interest the responses of some National Party members in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, who have been asked their views on this. When I first heard this, one of the things that came to my mind was: I wonder what Ron Boswell thinks about this, because, whatever else may be said about Senator Boswell, he has been a true-blue, staunch advocate of National Party politics for some time. I give him credit; I actually like Ron; I think Bos is a decent fellow. But this is what he said: ‘I was born politically a National and I will die one.’ He better have a talk to his state president—his colleague from Queensland—because that is not the deal they have stitched up. This is not the ‘Rent a National Party’ that we knew in days of old; this is actually the holus-bolus sale of the show.

But there has been, I suppose, one silver lining on the cloud for the Queensland Nationals. During the last 48 hours the unthinkable has occurred: the member for Maranoa and the national President of the National Party, David Russell, have achieved what I thought could not be achieved—they have got Senator Ron Boswell and Senator Barnaby Joyce on a unity ticket. They have Barnaby Joyce in the same camp with Ron Boswell. Only a few days ago that is not something that many of us would have thought possible, but it is an indication of the mess that the National Party is in in Queensland.

All jokes aside, the real tragedy of this is that the constituency west of the divide have, for two generations, looked to the National Party in Queensland and the Country Party before it to defend their rights. I have to say, for two generations before that they looked to the Labor Party for the same reason. They will return to the Labor Party after they see this debacle. This is a very interesting development in Queensland politics. Those west of the divide have been forsaken by those they have placed their trust in for two generations now. Barnaby Joyce knows that; Ron Boswell knows that; in fact, every member of the National Party in this parliament, bar one, knows that—but they are not willing to say it publicly. They know it in their hearts, and their problem is that they now have themselves into this cycle of feeding on one another. The National Party can put out their ‘For sale’ sign; the Liberal Party can subsume them— (Time expired)