Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Leadership! What has changed is leadership. One Nation themselves will tell you they have not changed. Their policy agenda now is the same policy agenda they had them. Sure, it started off with bashing Indigenous Australians, then they were being swamped by Asians, and now, of course, that has been updated and upgraded to being about the Muslims—there are clearly too many of them. I say to my friends from the subcontinent: watch out; you are next! That has not changed. The racist policy agenda has not changed. The economic madness of a lot of what they suggest has not changed. What has changed is that we have a weak, pathetic Liberal Party leader who does not have the strength or stamina to actually stand up to anybody. We had the Prime Minister come out last week and say, 'I'll look billionaires in the eye; I am so tough,' and yet at every opportunity he folds; at every opportunity for leadership he collapses. It is weak. It is pathetic. It is not the type of leadership that this country needs. The policy agenda has not changed; the only thing that has changed is that we have a Prime Minister who is too weak to stand up to it.

The Western Australian Liberal Party has effectively said: 'We will do anything we can to try to hold on at this point in time. Even if it means we will have an unworkable upper house, even if it means we are handing the balance of power to One Nation, none of that matters. Even if it means destroying a long-term coalition, none of that matters, because the act of attaining power is everything.' We have two obligations in this place. Of course we all want to win votes, but there has to be a red line somewhere. John Howard, Ron Boswell—the leaders of those opposite a generation ago—were people of principle who were prepared to stand up. On so many different policy areas you would not find me agreeing with Ron Boswell or former Prime Minister Howard, but where we would agree is that there are some fundamentals of Australian society, a core set of values we have in this country, that have to be protected, and we have to work together to achieve that. Legitimising extremist views is not a way of achieving that.