Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.' This is Hitchens's razor, created to refute religious dogma, and I bring it out again to dismiss the political preachings of the ABC's Laura Tingle, specifically her attack on Australia at the Sydney Writers Festival. We are a great country. That statement is self-evident. We are not a racist country. That, too, is a statement that needs no defence. I will always stand up for Australia and this side of the House will always stand up for Australia.

The only statements requiring evidence now are any claims as to Ms Tingle's professional integrity. She holds the beliefs, which she expressed at the writers festival, that Australian taxpayers are racist. How can she possibly justify continuing to draw her taxpayer funded wage from them? There is no integrity at all in that position. The only credible path would be to renounce her salary—with the same readiness and disdain with which she denounced my beautiful country—and give Australians their money back. Of course, I do not expect this to happen but rather for her to continue enjoying Australia's bounty while pouring contempt on those who provide it.

But I do have something very much to thank her for. She has given us a source of entertainment—a feat that the ratings tell us the ABC regularly struggles to achieve. Ms Tingle presents herself as a non-partisan journalist, and I, for one, find that quite funny.