Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to know that Senator Macdonald is going to shout them all tonight, too, so congratulations on that. I wanted to start off tonight by talking about the Queensland state election. I am not really going to talk about it other than to note that every time a state election comes up the local senators here get stuck into the issues—I commend Senator Ian Macdonald for not doing so tonight—and we have very various slanging matches in here about the state election and the virtues and faults of the various state parties are expressed. And you know what? Not one vote is ever shifted. It is just group therapy. It is just sending a signal back home that the boys and girls down here are representing their home state.