George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have been sitting here for the last 20 minutes listening in utter fascination to Senator Carr constructing for himself an evermore implausible, elaborate, Byzantine conspiracy theory. As Senator Carr’s time counted down, I thought: ‘What a pity Senator Carr’s time is expiring, because, if he had another 10 minutes, I am sure he could have worked out a way to persuade himself that Senator Ian Campbell had something to do with the Kennedy assassination.’ Of course, Senator Carr, being an old-fashioned Stalinist, loves conspiracy theories. For Senator Carr, everything is a conspiracy. Senator Carr, I do not have any doubt that you believe it but, as the great Sir Isaiah Berlin once famously said, there is no a priori reason to believe that the truth, when discovered, will turn out to be interesting. Senator Carr, although I listened with rapt fascination to your elaborate baroque conspiracy theory, I am afraid the truth is much more prosaic.

What I am going to do in the time available to me is to take the Senate carefully, methodically, through the prosaic truth of the matter. But before I begin to do that—