Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speaker, I congratulate you as my next-door neighbour on your elevation. I am sure you will look after me as your neighbour throughout this 47th Parliament. I want to talk, particularly with you in the chair, about a former Labor Party member of this parliament, who was actually a Postmaster-General, a Minister for Home Affairs and a Minister for External Affairs. He did great service to this nation. I stand today to tell you that we need to make amends for the fact that Hugh Mahon is the only person to have been expelled from this parliament. He was expelled for making 'seditious and disloyal utterances' about the British Empire. I know the member for Fremantle supports me in this endeavour of trying to make right what occurred 100 years ago.

In fact, on Monday night—I will put this on the record—I had dinner with the Sinn Fein leader, Mary Lou McDonald, here in Canberra, and I probably will do so again on Friday night in Brisbane, so things have changed. On Monday night we talked about my support for a united Ireland, and many other people at that event would say the same thing. But back in 1919, when the Irish War of Independence had begun, things were quite different here. When Hugh Mahon was talking about the hunger strike death of the Irish nationalist Terry MacSwiney— (Time expired)