Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to enter into this debate. I can say to Senator Di Natale: be careful! This weekend he is going to get every union thug in Australia ringing him, along with the few other members that there are of the Australian Labor Party. Just earlier today—what was it?—at 1.48 pm, Mr George Wright, the National Secretary of the Australian Labor Party sent out a message, a plea, to all members. In part it talked about this particular issue that Senator Collins was speaking about. He said, 'Together we can make it clear to the Greens political party that we have concerns about these changes.' I think the Labor Party have made them aware of that without this following message. It goes on to say, 'Can you call the office of Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, and let them know you are concerned about letting Work Choices happen all over again. Click here to get phone numbers and some key facts for the call.'

So, they expect the Greens to fall for the line that all of these phone calls that are going to happen over the weekend and next week are 'concerned Australians' who just happen to have picked up the phone to ring, whereas in fact they will be from every union thug and every other person who happens to be a member of the ALP—and I suspect that is not many.

But this letter from Mr Wright follows some of the outrageous mistruths that Labor members in this debate have said: it is extinguishing the vote of over 3.3 million people—so this letter says. That is just plain wrong. It says that this will allow the coalition to end up with a majority of the seats—that is just plain wrong! And as we heard in this debate in its many forms here, Mr Anthony Green went through and said, 'Yes, the coalition could get a majority if they win a big swag of the votes in the election, and the way we are going, that is likely to happen.' But I think, as I said yesterday, it will not be at the expense of the Greens; it will be at the expense of the crossbench and the Australian Labor Party, who have shown themselves to be completely ridiculous on this particular bill.

I heard earlier today, on a bill that was introduced by the Labor Party, how the Labor Party were lauding former Senator John Faulkner on being the wise man of the Labor Party. He put forward the bill on the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and, because John Faulkner did it, it had to be good. Let me tell you some of the people who sat on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters back in 2014 when there was a unanimous decision to support it. By 'unanimous', I mean it was supported by all parties attending that committee, which were the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Labor Party, the Greens and Senator Xenophon. Let's see who the Labor Party senators were on that. Lo and behold, Senator Tillem, Senator Faulkner and Mr Alan Griffin. That was one meeting, in March. The next meeting had Senator Tillem, Senator Faulkner and Alan Griffin again. The next meeting had Tillem, Griffin and Gary Gray. The next meeting had Tillem, Gary Gray and Alan Griffin. The 7 February meeting—