Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to begin by sharing with the chamber a cartoon by Moir in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. It is very illuminating. The New South Wales ALP is represented by a caricature of Premier Rees, who says, ‘Hey Kev! ... Remember me?! Your Sydney cousin ... Remember?’ A hastily moving Prime Minister is ducking into the back seat of a Commonwealth car, while saying to the chauffeur, ‘Step on it!’ Federal Labor is running a mile from their cousins in New South Wales Labor.

Recently, there was a motion of no confidence in the New South Wales parliament—why wouldn’t there be, given the soap opera that has now become the New South Wales government? The New South Wales government is kept on its feet by the New South Wales Labor Right. In his speech on that motion, the Leader of the Opposition articulated the litany of scandals and the broken promises that have been presided over by the New South Wales government. In New South Wales, we are seeing spectacle after spectacle of this government on a daily basis. Quite frankly, it is about time that New South Wales Labor put everybody in that state out of their misery and that we go to an election to enable the electors of New South Wales to change government.

State Labor in New South Wales is a catastrophe. It is so bad that it has become a gross embarrassment. It is tragic for the people of New South Wales and the people we represent in what has now become a failed state. Voters are naturally very upset about it. Of course, Kevin Rudd tries to distance himself from the New South Wales Labor Party but the Labor Party in New South Wales is the very well-organised machine which made him Prime Minister. Let us not forget that the Prime Minister is supported by the same right-wing faction in New South Wales Labor that runs the state. Minister Arbib is one of the key figures in it. Therefore, the group who is responsible for the catastrophe that is the Labor government, the train wreck, in New South Wales is the same group that put Kevin Rudd into the leadership—