Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are quite right, Mr Deputy President. I was so taken aback and stunned by Senator Wong, who is one of the so-called rising stars from the other side—and you will note that I am talking to you, Mr Deputy President, to inform you about Senator Wong’s so-called reputation. If anyone can come in here and try to present an alternative policy or intelligent argument, it is Senator Wong. It looks like she has caught the disease of opposition too. She has been in opposition way too long also. She missed a perfect opportunity to put down for the Labor Party a skerrick of debate.

She did not even raise the centrepiece of the Labor Party’s policy in regard to industrial relations—something that has been in and out of the papers for the last several months, something we are told will be the centrepiece of their next campaign in 2007, which they are going to fight all the way to the election. I have not heard one question in this chamber on industrial relations. Senator Wong, who again is someone who can carry that debate from the opposition’s point of view, has not asked one single question. And that is the centrepiece of what the Labor Party are going to go the next election with. It more than any other policy has been elevated to the point where they want to get the message out to the public, but they do not. Therein lies the fraud of the whole argument.

They come in here and try to talk about divisions. When it comes to division, who can match the Labor Party? They are supreme. Even the public—it is one message that you have got out to the public—are only too well aware, particularly from my state of Victoria, that when it comes to division it is all about the Labor Party. They have just come out of a bitter preselection battle down there in Victoria, where Bill Shorten was parachuted into a safe seat and Simon Crean courageously hung onto his seat under great threat. But of course we know the bitterness and the division it still causes within that party today.

When it comes to division between your colleagues, what could be more divisive than Mr Beazley not consulting his shadow cabinet or ministry—whatever you want to call it—or anyone within his own party, for that matter, and doing the backflip on AWAs a couple of weeks ago? He just did it. Talk about conflict! So much so that a timid, unnamed frontbencher came forward—I should say ‘courageous’ but I will say timid because he would not name himself, although he was courageous because he put the truth down. We all suspect who it is.