Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some comments on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Report on the 2007 federal election—events in the division of Lindsay: review of penalty provisions in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, because this report is of great importance and interest to the people of Australia. They need to know that the conduct in and during elections is above and beyond reproach. We heard earlier Senator Hutchins’s attack on the Liberal Party, in which he referred to the events in Lindsay, which have been condemned by Liberals and most notably by the Prime Minister at the time, who said:

I condemn what happened. It was an unauthorised document. It does not represent my views. It was tasteless and offensive.

Yet Senator Hutchins is in some way trying to suggest that something improper has happened because one man was convicted and another man was not. It is an extraordinary claim and accusation, because there is a marked contrast between the treatment of those who do improper things within the Liberal Party organisational capacities and those who do the wrong thing in the Labor Party. In the Liberal Party they get kicked out, they get asked to leave or they get suspended. What happens in the Labor Party if you do the wrong thing, if you rort the electoral roll and you have to resign from your seat in Queensland? You get a job, a $450,000 job, with no other candidates announced and no advertising for it. That is what happens if you are a rorter in the Labor Party: you get rewarded. What happens if you are a rorter in the Labor Party? You get to be put forward for preselection as a Prime Minister’s choice, as Senator Ronaldson mentioned. In the seat of Herbert in Queensland, the person that the Prime Minister of this country has chosen, having used his authority to override the wishes of the local electorate, is a rorter. Once again, in Labor rorters are rewarded, an inconvenient truth that Senator Hutchins does not want to acknowledge in this parliament.

But how can we touch upon hypocrisy without going to the high priest of hypocrisy and the party of hypocrisy? Quite frankly, that is the Greens movement. It is a continuing disappointment that the public claims of the Greens do not match their behind-the-scenes dealings and that their calls for accountability and adequate scrutiny never apply to their own organisation or policies; somehow it all goes through to the keeper. The other day I used what I would say was an intemperate phrase in here about how the Greens wished to mark businesses associated with the Exclusive Brethren with some sort of green Star of David and I withdrew that use of the Star of David because it offends so many who suffered under the hideous Nazi regime. But the inconvenient truth for Senator Bob Brown is that his press release that went out in 2006 or thereabouts actually asked for a register of Exclusive Brethren businesses—because they dared oppose some of the Greens’ extreme left Marxist policies. He wants a register of businesses based on religious belief or because you are a member of a particular organisation. What a hideous and grotesque thing to want to introduce into Australian public life! So proud of this is Senator Bob Brown that, when it was exposed to public scrutiny, he removed it from his website—just that line—so he could have plausible deniability. But we have a copy of that document, because it is appalling and goes to the very heart of the hypocrisy of the Greens movement.

What about the Greens’ drug policies? They deny they want to deal drugs. They deny they want to make penalties for the illicit use of drugs less severe. If you go to their website, you will find that they want to initiate a trial of prescribing heroin to registered users and addicts. That sounds to me like handing out drugs. They want to have injecting rooms. They want to give the vote to murderers, rapists and other people who are in prison. These are the sorts of policies that the Australian people are not aware of when they vote for the extreme green movement. As Senator Macdonald said, they have a public image where they seem like an environmental party that is actually interested in koalas. Let me tell you that I am more interested in people than koalas. I want to save the lives of people. The koalas might have to look after themselves for a while, particularly the koala that runs around claiming to be from the Wilderness Society, collecting bucketloads of cash and tipping it into the extreme green movement, whose fundraising—if unorthodox—methods led to calls that Senator Bob Brown might go bankrupt, so the money started to pour in for his legal fund. I wonder about the declarations of who donated to that fund or about when Senator Bob Brown stood up in this place and talked about the disclosure of electoral donations, yet he had line after line after line of anonymous donations flowing in through his fundraising efforts.

These are all questions about the integrity, the reliability and the veracity of what is said inside and outside this chamber by a movement, an organisation, that is as deceptive as it is—I am trying to choose my word to go here very carefully. Let me make it very clear that the Greens are an organisation, a political party, that say one thing and do another. They talk about integrity, they talk about reliability, they talk about transparency and we do not actually see much action. I am not sure why they do not get examined more closely and I am not sure why the public statements of their leaders are not examined more rigorously and why they are not continually reminded of them. With my party, with the Labor Party and with the National Party it seems our comments are on the record and are there to be examined, and we are reminded of them regularly, but somehow the Greens seem to escape this. I register my disappointment as to that and I hope that it will change.

In conclusion, going back to the events in the division of Lindsay, it was a sham, it was very poor form and it meets with the support and approval of no-one that I know in the Liberal Party. It is something that most Australians, I am sure, find undesirable in their political system. Accordingly, it is only right and proper that we support stronger penalties that are realistic and practical, and that is why this report has my endorsement. I will leave my comments at that and express once again my support for the findings of this report.

Question agreed to.