Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I know what a keen student of history you are, and no doubt you will remember, or remember reading about, the time Mick Young regaled this House, telling how the gatehouse at the Downer mansion was bigger than the Lodge, and no doubt you might recall—I know what a good student of history you are—how Paul Keating famously called Alexander Downer 'the idiot son of the Adelaide establishment'. Well, we know there's a Downer running in the Mayo by-election soon, but she's not from the Adelaide establishment; most importantly, she's from the Victorian establishment, and there we have her, on TV, with 'Georgina Downer, Victorian Liberal Party'.

Mr Wood interjecting—

And we have a member from Victoria, the member for La Trobe, opposite, saying that she's fantastic. Well, the reason he thinks that she's fantastic is: she's Victorian! That's why he's saying she's fantastic!

We remember the quote from the Financial Review which said:

We asked the woman herself and she laughed it off, reminding us that she hadn't lived in the serial killing capital since before Snowtown was on the map, and is comfortably ensconced with her family in Melbourne.

So not only was she happy to claim Melbourne as her home; she was happy to snub and insult South Australia, and to refer to some of the worst criminal acts in the state's history, many of which occurred in my electorate, as some sort of joke—some sort of thing to be laughed about and to slur Adelaide with. I mean, you just can't quite believe it. Those are comments she has not denied to this day, even though she has been challenged to do so in the South Australian parliament. Of course, remember, on the Adelaide Now website, she also said, 'I live and work in Melbourne and have no plans to return to Adelaide.'

So we know that the Liberal Party candidate in Mayo is seeking to take a seat back for the government, for the first time since the 1930s, I think, or maybe it was a bit before that—maybe it was before the war. We have here a woman trying to make by-election history in the seat for the government. And we know she is imported from the Melbourne establishment. That's pretty significant, because we know she has also been on TV saying that less GST revenue should come to South Australia, because, she said:

More recently, WA's sense of unfairness at the distribution of GST revenue has fed calls for a WAxit—

WA's exit from our nation. She said:

The current arrangements for the carve-up of GST revenue do not work.

And on she goes, about Western Australia.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree with her!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the member opposite says she agrees with her. There are fixes for the great state of Western Australia, but what we have here is a Victorian who is sticking up for Western Australia—but not for South Australia; there's no talk of protecting South Australia's GST revenue stream.

So what we have here is a candidate for a by-election in the Adelaide Hills; a candidate who is a carpetbagger; a candidate—

An opposition member: A blow in!

who's a blow-in; a candidate who's from the Melbourne establishment; a candidate who has adopted very, very orthodox positions on the GST revenue. We know she's against the minimum wage—we know that; there are some quotes about the minimum wage here that I could read for those opposite. She said on the Speers show that the minimum wage was 'all very well for people who already have a job but actually presents quite an obstacle to those 700,000 Australians who are out there looking for work and might not be able to get jobs because of these artificially high wages set by the Fair Work Commission'. It doesn't sound very supportive of the minimum wage.

We also know that she opposed the banking royal commission. She said, 'No, it's not going to achieve anything, I don't think. It's in the public interest ultimately to have a competitive and lightly regulated banking sector.' So she's obviously no oracle, either, because she thought the banking royal commission wouldn't come up with anything. Hasn't she been wrong about that!

The people of the Adelaide Hills—and my mum used to live up there, so I know something of the area—have a very important decision to make. I'm no friend of the Nick Xenophon Team party—

Mr Wood interjecting—

I hear my friend interjecting there. I've made many speeches in this House attacking the Nick Xenophon Team. But would you really back in another Downer—in this case from the Melbourne establishment—into the seat of Mayo?