Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If my memory serves me rightly, it had a very distinguished and hardworking member—and thank you very much for the interjection. While we are on Ballarat, we have Samantha McIntosh, another small business person, and the incumbent member, Catherine King, one of the EMILY’s List sort of leading lights. We saw in the last two weeks behaviour that I have never seen in my life in politics.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate referred to my time as the member for Ballarat. I can tell you that I had four Labor candidates running against me, and we acted as decent human beings. It was tough and it was rough but I tell you what: it did not sink to the levels that Catherine King sunk to two weeks ago. She ran an ad against Samantha McIntosh that broke all the rules. Then, having got a massive community backlash, she started to backtrack and she started invoking the name of the Leader of the Opposition as a peacemaker.

I think it is unlikely that Mr Rudd would have intervened, but he may have because he knows that this was a low act. You have never heard any member of this government commenting on the Leader of the Opposition’s wife—and, quite frankly, nor should we. What she does is entirely her business, and we would not reflect on that.