Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan may be able to correct me when he gets up to speak, because he may have been at the dinner. I am not sure whether Senator Heffernan is in the extreme right wing faction of the Liberal Party or one of the combatants, but it was definitely the David Clarke group in the New South Wales Liberal Party. This also highlights exactly what Senator Cameron was talking about earlier. This is, I understand, how Senator Bernardi commenced his remarks. He said: ‘I wandered into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting thinking it was a Liberal Party meeting. I said, “My name is Cory Bernardi, and I haven’t had a left-wing thought for 27 years and no-one in the Labor Party has ever approached me to join it!”’ That apparently brought the house down.