Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

They can keep interjecting all they like but they know that is the reality of where they sit on this issue. If the Labor Party want to have a debate about the Greens record versus the Labor Party when it comes to progressive politics and fighting for progressive values, bring it on. I think we have the credentials in that debate and I think we will win that debate.

I also have seen some rather bizarre statements made in social media over the last few days. I will share one of the posts on Facebook with you. It was by the Australian Labor Party and it said, 'We will never help the Liberals into power. We will never do anything to help the Liberals into power.' I had a bit of a laugh when I saw that because the first thing that came to mind was, 'We will never help the Liberals into power.' I thought, 'How did we find ourselves here?' How did we find ourselves with an Abbott government? How did we find ourselves in a situation where a man who was incredibly unpopular, the most unpopular opposition leader in the nation's history, found himself in the Lodge? The answer is pretty simple. The Australian Labor Party practically packed his bags and drove him there themselves. They packed is bags, they drove him there and they moved him into the Lodge because their complete ineptitude, infighting and division we saw while Labor was in power over those six years was the biggest free kick the conservative side of politics has ever had in this country. It was the Labor Party that gave Tony Abbott the free ride he needed to get into the Lodge and it was the Labor Party that brought that inept and incompetent man into the prime ministership. It was the Labor Party that brought about that outcome. Had they had their act together in government, you cannot tell me that we would have seen the coalition elected in 2013. Any credible commentator in this country will tell you that. So if you want to talk about helping the Liberals into power, it was the Labor Party that were rally—