Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak to the ABC annual report for 2008-09. We have just seen the campaign of hate and vilification for the ABC from Senator Fierravanti-Wells out here in full flight today. Senator Fierravanti-Wells has got form on the ABC. She thinks that the ABC is some communist plot to vilify the Liberal Party. What you need to understand Senator Fierravanti-Wells is that the ABC reports the truth. When they report the truth about the incompetence of the Liberal Party, when they report on the climate change deniers of the Liberal Party they are doing a public service. They are actually exposing the narrow-minded approach of the Liberal Party on a whole range of issues.

If the Liberal Party—I will come to the National Party in a minute—is so narrow minded that it cannot accept the signs of climate change then it is quite appropriate for the ABC to say the Liberal Party is a bunch of dills, that the Liberal Party is a rabble who really do not know where it is at. I think that it is appropriate for the ABC to deal with the Liberal Party on how they should be dealt with—as incompetents, as a divided party, as a party which now has a leader whose nickname is the ‘mad monk’, who when he came into parliament was the bad boy of the Liberal Party. Well, you have got him as your leader now.

It is appropriate for the ABC to trawl through things and have a look at someone who has got to set himself up as the next Prime Minister of this country and is trying to be a Prime Minister—someone who is untrustworthy, someone who backflips on every commitment, someone who tries to set himself up as a weathervane Prime Minister. What a joke! Then those opposite criticise the ABC for actually focusing on the inability of the Liberal Party to have a policy or a direction for the future of this country. We know you in the Liberal Party hate that because when you go on there you are exposed for the frauds and charlatans that you are. That is the problem you have got with the ABC; it has nothing to do with how much Kerry O’Brien earns or whether you cannot stand his questioning or whether you wilt in the face of the truth. That is the problem with you lot: you have got absolutely no spine, you have got no values, you have got no commitments and you try to blame the ABC for all your weaknesses. Don’t come here bleating about the ABC. Try and have some strength, try and have some policies, try and have some commitments—and by that I mean real ones that will stand up to some scientific analysis, not what you get from Senator Bernardi, who goes onto the right-wing US websites to try to make himself the hero of the climate change sceptics. No wonder the ABC gives you a bit of a roughing-up when you get on there, because you do not deserve to be treated with any credibility. That is the problem for you lot: you have got no credibility, you are absolutely hopeless and the ABC are doing a public service in exposing you.

Let us come to the National Party and let us come to Senator Joyce, the human headline, the great retail politician who forced Mr Abbott to put him in to talk about the economic situation in this country—an absolute joke. Is it any wonder that the ABC would challenge the credibility of Senator Joyce on economic matters? Is it any wonder that they would challenge Mr Abbott on economic matters? The ABC are doing a public service for this country—(Time expired)