Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If it's of assistance to you, Acting Deputy President, I withdraw the assertion that he sung for his supper, but I maintain that we don't know what political donations have been given by the Federal Group to Senator Abetz or any other member of the Tasmanian Liberal Party. We just don't know, and that is not good enough. Who pays the price? The Tasmanian people pay the price. The Tasmanian people are the ones that are losing out, have lost out for decades—

Senator Williams interjecting—

and will keep losing out, Senator Williams, if the Liberals get into government after the next election. It's crucial for the Tasmanian people—the voters of Tasmania—to understand that the only election result that's going to allow this leeching of food off the table of Tasmanians, this sucking of money out of Tasmanian small businesses, is a Liberal majority government. Any other outcome and the pokies are gone out of pubs and clubs—and so they should be. The Labor Party should never have given that monopoly deal to Federal Hotels in 2002. They had no mandate to do so. They received massive donations in return for it. And now, thankfully, the Labor Party has recovered itself, via the Greens, and the acid is now on the Liberals.