Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

The most notable contribution made by Senator Sterle was the fact that he did not repeat the words of the Leader of the House. When Senator Evans was asked this question earlier this afternoon, he went to a great deal of trouble not to repeat the words of the Leader of the House yesterday. With that contribution, I am sure Senator Sterle has guaranteed his preselection again, assuming there are lots of TWU delegates and that that they will be very happy with that vaguely relevant contribution to the discussion we are having.

I challenge those from the government side who come after me: repeat the words of the Leader of the House. Repeat the accusations and the slurs made towards those who were protesting yesterday, because only an arrogant, conceited government would dismiss citizens who come to Canberra to protest against them as inconsequential.

On this side, we are used to protests, particularly when they are organised by some of the more thuggish elements of the union movement. There was an example back here in 1996 where vandalism was committed on Parliament House. This side does not seek to dismiss those who protest; it seeks to engage them. This government runs around shouting out the words 'Hawke' and 'Keating' as though they represent the Holy Spirit, hoping for some sort of political Pentecost, to give them some inspiration in politics. The only tongues that come out of this government are the tongues of mistruth, arrogance and conceit. This government does not actually want to engage with people who disagree with it; it seeks to ride roughshod over them. It seeks to say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards, and then simply hope that the people will forget by the next poll.

This government will be held to account for its words. These words uttered by the Leader of the House yesterday when he referred to the inconsequential protesters, the convoy of the inconsequential, are going to hang around this government's neck like an albatross—just like former Prime Minister Paul Keating's little quip to those university students in 1995 when there was 10 per cent unemployment and he told them to go get a job—how dare they challenge the great and wise then Prime Minister Paul Keating; he could just flick them off and tell them to go get a job. That hung around that Prime Minister's neck right through to the 1996 election, and it is one of the things he is remembered for by those who were trying to get a job at the time. Sadly, unlike during the government that came after that of Paul Keating, there were many more people desperately looking for work.

From the Greens we expect terms like whingers and moaners; from the Greens we expect the vilification of those who disagree with them. The New South Wales branch supports occupations, it supports efforts to vilify particular businesses by virtue of who owns them—

Senator Marshall interjecting—

I said the New South Wales Greens support occupations, as we have seen recently in Melbourne. What I find truly amazing is that we can have illegal picket lines, we can have picket lines where people have to be bused to work behind blackened windows to keep them safe, we can have the sort of appalling behaviour that took place on the waterfront at East Swanson Dock in Melbourne just over a decade ago—

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Yes, and the death threats to their workers, and the blackened windows on the buses, and ignoring Supreme Court orders in Victoria—we can have all that, but how dare 400 people turn up on the lawns of this parliament to actually complain. All they are asking the govern­ment to do it is to live up to the words of the Prime Minister days before the last election. How dare they come here. Illegal picket lines, thuggery on picket lines and bus windows being blackened so workers cannot be identified because of threats to them and their family are okay, but how dare 400 people come here and ask the government to only do what its Prime Minister said she would days before the last election.

This government has absolutely no credibility on this issue because of what it supports in the industrial relations framework. More importantly, the words uttered by the Leader of the House yesterday that these people were inconsequential will reverberate through the Australian community and they will reverberate because every Australian knows that if a government can say that about the 400 people who came to Canberra yesterday it actually thinks that about them as well. How dare they disagree! This government will be held accountable for those words.