Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

They are very sensitive, aren’t they? I was only 15 seconds into my answer and they were up on a point of order because they know the point I was going to make is the one that sinks them in the public debate each and every time. That is because we look at people’s abilities and do not, as you do in your patronising fashion, concentrate on their disability. If people have a capacity to work for 15 hours or more per week, we seek to engage them in the mainstream of society and not to throw them onto the waste heap of welfare recipients, like the Australian Labor Party did when they were last in government, when more than one million of our fellow Australians were unemployed. That is not good enough for us. It might be good enough for them. Let the Australian people be the judge at the next election. (Time expired)