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

I was referring to the member for Cook and I was in the electorate of Cook for many years until I moved west. We used to hold the seat of Cook once upon a time. Of course when the member for Cook was director of the Liberal Party in New South Wales, these activities occurred. I think it might be stretching the bow to think that he may have been associated with those activities; nevertheless, they did occur on his watch.

They were successful and the cronies and the morons within the Liberal Party in New South Wales thought they could get away with it again in Lindsay. So a few nights before the election in 2007, a hand-picked group of morons in the Liberal Party in New South Wales were dispatched to go and leaflet an area in the seat of Lindsay, North St Marys, which is full of men and women from an Anglo-Celtic background, to say—I cannot recall the exact words of the leaflet—that part of our policy was to build a mosque and to allow increased Muslim immigration into Australia.

Fortunately, because there are some decent men and women in the Liberal Party in New South Wales, we were alerted to the fact that this scam was about to occur and I was one of the few people who were involved in making sure that we caught them in the act. We caught them in the act when they were leafleting with these disgraceful, racist leaflets. We caught them because I sat waiting near the home of Jackie Kelly, the then member for Lindsay. I sat there waiting for them to come out of her home and go from there to North St Marys. Jackie Kelly lives in a very salubrious part of Penrith right on the Nepean River. We waited there and Jackie Kelly’s husband, Gary Clark, and a number of other people from the Liberal Party, including a member of the Liberal Party state executive, Jeff Egan, were dispatched to North St Marys to anonymously leaflet these unauthorised documents in that area. But fortunately, because there are some good people in the Liberal Party in New South Wales, as I said, we were alerted to this and we caught them in the act.

You may well recall, Madam Acting Deputy President Cash, that not more than two days later a photograph of Jackie Kelly’s husband appeared on the front page of the Daily Telegraph in Sydney where he was covering his face with the leaflet that he was distributing. There was also a member of the executive of the state Liberal Party, Jeff Egan, who had been a councillor on Blue Mountains City Council and was a member of the right wing or the conservative part of the Liberal Party in New South Wales, and his brother. I actually saw Jeff and his brother distributing these leaflets. I pulled them up and said: ‘You should not be doing this. This is wrong. Just go home.’ After I told them to go home, they continued to leaflet the area. I do not know what was going through their bloody minds at the time, but they continued to operate. There were about a dozen of these Liberals there at the time doing this. I was amazed because I had known Egan for some time since he was on the Blue Mountains City Council. I just could not believe that a man of his standing would perpetrate the sort of racist activity that the Liberal Party involved themselves in at the time.

Madam Acting Deputy President Cash, as you would be well aware, a number of people involved in that operation were subsequently convicted and fined for their activities. I must say that I find it amazing that the magistrate convicted Gary Clark on my evidence, even though I never saw Gary Clark actually put the leaflet in a letterbox, but he dismissed the case against Jeff Egan, the state executive member of the Liberal Party, who I did see put the leaflet in a letterbox. Gary Clark is Jackie Kelly’s husband and is not a bad sort of a fellow, but he was convicted on my evidence. I find it interesting that Jeff Egan was not convicted. Subsequently, a few of us had a private prosecution for assault brought against us. I can inform the Senate that I was not convicted because they did not proceed with the assault charges.

I just want to say to the New South Wales Liberal Party—and I am glad that Senator Ryan here is one of the true liberals in this place—that their conservative, racist actions were pulled up on that day. Hopefully, we will never see that sort of action again. Hopefully, we will never again see an attempt to divide the community on racial or religious grounds like the attempt made by those silly men on that day a few days before the election. The one thing I am grateful for is that I think it contributed to the loss of the seat of the Prime Minister.