Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This preference deal is an attempt from a desperate Barnett government to cling onto power. That is what it is about. Senator Reynolds commented that it is a WA issue, so perhaps Senator Sinodinos should not have made the comments that he made yesterday about One Nation being more sophisticated and evolved. Let me read you a couple of the comments from the 'sophisticated and evolved' candidate for One Nation in the Pilbara in Western Australia. On the comment that Tony Abbott made about lifestyle choices, Mr Archibald wrote:

The first that springs to mind is single motherhood. These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly three million years of evolutionary pressure.

Maybe that is why Senator Sinodinos was commenting about their evolution as a party. He went on:

This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly. We know what causes pregnancy these days, so everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer. This is an easy one for defunding.

Mr Archibald also used the article to suggest defunding the disability support pension and child care. He said:

The 800,000 Australians on the disability pension. OK, not all of them. But a good proportion are able to drive cars, bash police and each other, go fishing and so on.

He also then went on to have a go at federally-funded child care. He said:

This is a lifestyle choice. Looking after children is very labour-intensive … If society wishes to encourage childbearing, it should reward that with tax rebates to the childbearing pair and leave it at that.

Perhaps Senator Sinodinos did not read those comments and was not aware of those comments. What about their continual denial of climate change? At a time that we are all suffering the effects of it being either unseasonably hot or unseasonably cold, they are still denying climate change.

This is about Barnett's desperate attempts to cling to power when the broader community is saying: 'No, thank you. We've had enough of your failed policies. You're building monuments to yourself in Western Australia, wasting the money that came from the mining boom in WA and failing to see the flaws in this approach.' (Time expired)