Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage (Senator Ian Campbell) to questions without notice asked today.

Today we heard from Senator Ian Campbell on a range of issues. This was in the context of widespread speculation that there is to be a reshuffle—widespread speculation that the government is in the process of undertaking spring cleaning. I think today’s answers quite clearly demonstrated why it is so widely speculated that Senator Campbell would be the subject of that spring cleaning. I say that in the context of an article in the 17 October edition of the Bulletin, a highly entertaining piece written by Mr Wright, in which it was suggested that perhaps Senator Campbell needed some shoring up. We see in this article a series of quite laudatory comments being made and Senator Campbell’s suggestions on how he sees his place in the world.

As a result of the answers given to today’s questions, Mr Wright might want to write a follow-up article. He has now had more opportunity to review the research materials that are available and see that the range of comments being made highlight that there are entirely different views. He would be entitled to start with comments made by Senator Campbell himself. Senator Campbell said that, when he was an 18-year-old lecturer in a business course—the idea of being a lecturer at 18 years of age is extraordinary; it must be an amazing business course at the Western Australian Institute of Technology—he wanted to be a cabinet minister. He was so committed to this that he immediately went off and joined the Democrats. In a letter he wrote to the West Australian on 16 October 1980 he pointed out how proud he was to be a Democrat and what a vital role the Democrats had to play in the Senate.

We also note that Senator Campbell wanted to be Treasurer but had a bit of trouble finding a House of Representatives seat in Western Australia. I think that is an extraordinary proposition. I note that he puts that down to power players in his home state of Western Australian because they continued to deny him his chance of preselection. Given that the Bulletin has awarded Senator Campbell its ‘power man of the year’ award, I would have thought he could have fixed that up—but he has not. I find that very disappointing.

What we have here, though, is that the colleagues of Senator Campbell do not seem to share the Bulletin’s award, or place value upon it, because Senator Campbell’s Liberal colleagues think he is struggling. They know he is struggling because, when he is not patrolling the world’s oceans on his worldwide quest, as I read in a recent press report, as if he were some sort of transmogrified Captain Ahab, what he is doing is saving parrots in Victoria and seeking to intervene in due process in Victoria to protect marginal seats. We also have his colleagues in the Northern Territory—and I am sure Senator Crossin will draw our attention to it much more clearly than I ever could—describing him as a ‘complete dill’, because he is a fellow who is behaving as if he is some sort of ‘itinerant drunk full of dutch courage’. We have a view being expressed by a number of people that he is ‘almost barmy and I am expecting to be sent out soon in a rescue party team to bring him back to civilisation’. These are extraordinary comments being made by his colleagues about the ‘power man of the year’. You would have thought in this sort of context the powerbrokers of Western Australia could have organised to find him a lower house seat so he could stand as Treasurer and save us the difficulties we have from time to time of having to listen to the sort of nonsense that he is coming out with.

As Tony Wright has pointed out, the heat truly is on and it is coming from the Prime Minister. He knows the minister is an underperformer. He knows how long he has been in this chamber and how little he has contributed, and that in the period in which he has been the environment minister in the cabinet it is quite apparent that he has acted to the complete disservice to the people of this country and in a manner which is quite contrary to his responsibilities as a minister to ensure that the environment of this country is protected.

What we have seen from him time and time again is partisan, deliberate intervention in terms of heritage and other matters, often in breach of the law, and in a manner which is aimed at protecting the interests of the Liberal Party, not the interests of the environment. So it is in this context that I read Tony Wright’s article with some amusement, and it is quite apparent to me that much more can be said. (Time expired)