Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My children use the expression ‘gobsmacked’. It is an expression that I quite enjoy using myself. There would be a lot of people listening today—on their radios, driving the car, at home—on the first day that the Senate has sat this year who will be utterly gobsmacked by the total incompetence of the Australian Labor Party in the Senate. As one of my colleagues pointed out before, not only have the two senators had notes already prepared—this is a ‘take note of’; something that has come up during question time that the opposition wishes to take note of—but, as Senator Parry has said, they have got typed notes. So this was a deliberate strategy by the ALP prior to question time to make this their first take note.

If you go back through the newspapers over the last week and you listen to the Leader of the Opposition, you listen to the member for Griffith and you listen to Labor Party senators, they have been apparently talking about the Australian Wheat Board and other matters allegedly of importance to this country. Did we hear one word about that during the first opportunity the Australian Labor Party had to talk about matters of national interest when this Senate resumed sitting? No, we did not. We had the walking, talking doormat talking about the doormats allegedly in the National Party.

The reason why Senator Carr constantly grows his beard is so that we cannot see the scratch marks and the bite marks from Senator Conroy when he mauls him in the Victorian division of the Labor Party. For Senator Conroy to have the nerve to stand up here and talk about infighting and mauling quite frankly leaves me gobsmacked. If honourable senators look at today’s Age and look at the casualties of the infighting in the Labor Party and the mauling of the Left by the Right, and then look at that in the context of the rubbish we have heard today, they will see that that is a fairly clear indication that this Senate is going to have another 12 months of Labor Party incompetence.

There is one person in this chamber who does not need the help of Senator Conroy or Senator Carr, and that is Senator Nash. She is far smarter and far tougher than Senator Carr and Senator Conroy put together, and she does not need the Australian Labor Party to support her. I would think that if, at the end of this year, people were to look back at the start of this year and the discussions of the Labor Party, they would see that in some respects the white flag has been raised already. Look at Mr Beazley. Four days ago he was threatening to take out every single government minister, including the Prime Minister, in the first day of question time on the first day back. And last night he was saying that there would be no casualties.

Why is it that the Australian Labor Party is so totally incapable of giving its supporters any hope for the future? What will Labor Party members think about this pathetic attack today by the Labor Party on the first day of the Senate sitting? They will be as appalled as the people who are listening today. Again, the Labor Party branch membership has been let down by a totally incompetent opposition in the other place and a totally incompetent opposition in this place. Let us have some serious and genuine debate in this chamber. Let us actually meet some of the challenges that we were elected to confront rather than talking about a pathetic intervention by a pathetic opposition on a pathetic subject.