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

He might have had a farm, but it might have been a tax dodge. Being a solicitor, you might be able to assist us in finding out where that tax dodge could be best used.

In this address-in-reply I want to talk about a few things. The first is the last election. It must be galling to you, Madam Acting Deputy President Boyce, and members of the Liberal Party that your leader from New South Wales, Tony Abbott, a member of the New South Wales division, as you call it, performed so poorly in the last federal election. Labor lost one seat. We lost one person who was holding that seat, Maxine McKew. Some might say that is not a bad thing; I will not comment. We also did not pick up a seat that we had held, which was Macquarie. But there were seats that the coalition could have, should have and would have picked up if their New South Wales division and Tony Abbott, being one of the leaders of that division, had performed much better. In the seat of Macquarie there was Louise Markus, whose campaign in 2004 in Greenway was marked by racist and anti-religious comments by people who were against our candidate, a fellow called Eddie Husic, by background a Bosnian Muslim. He was subjected to a lot of racist and anti-religious mail, anonymous of course.

Louise Markus had won the seat of Greenway and when the redistribution occurred after the last election Mrs Markus decided to run for Macquarie. The Liberals endorsed in Greenway a young fellow who had very little connection with the area, who was not known and who was in fact more seen by the people in that area as a puppet of his father. He was selected as the Liberal candidate. If I recall, and maybe my coalition colleagues will correct me when they have an opportunity to make a contribution, we won that seat by a handful of votes. If you were a Liberal from other states, you might wonder why the Liberals did not ask Louise Markus to stay and contest Greenway. You might ask that. It was intriguing to us in the Labor Party that someone who had been the member for that area for nearly six years was so gutless that she moved on to another seat, which she won narrowly, but we won Greenway narrowly.

Then you go to Tony Abbott’s favourite seat, Lindsay, where the Liberal candidate was selected I think six weeks before the federal election. I am being generous here—I think it was four weeks but let us say it was six. Fiona Scott, whose family is involved in business in the area, I understand won the preselection from the Liberal Party preselectors because she said she would spend a quarter of a million dollars of her own money in winning the seat. As soon as Ms Scott became the candidate, they could not wheel her out anywhere because Ms Scott had not been trained to be a candidate. She had not been prepared for the job that she was going to do. The lady who was defeated in the preselection was in Toastmasters, was a very articulate woman and probably would have given us a run for our money. I know I speak on behalf of not only the New South Wales Labor Party but the government when I say I am grateful that the New South Wales Liberal division endorsed Fiona Scott, because we might not have held that seat. Lindsay was one of Tony Abbott’s signature seats. In fact, on election day he had his daughters handing out cards there and he spent a lot of time out there during the campaign. As you may recall, Madam Acting Deputy President, so did the Prime Minister. We won that seat. We had a swing against us but we retained the seat with a one per cent margin due to the great work of the sitting member, David Bradbury.

I notice there are no New South Wales Liberals in here today but that there is a National Party senator. They did deliver for the coalition in the bush, unfortunately for us.