Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

What were these characters doorknocking about in the middle of the Voice campaign? What were they on about? They were doorknocking about Max Chandler-Mather and housing. In the middle of the Voice campaign, what are these characters up to? It's all about the slogan. It's all about the social media post. It's all about column inches in the Jacobin magazine and the Green Left Weekly. It is never about building additional homes. In fact, because of their posturing and their connivance with their friends in the Liberal and National parties, 30,000 fewer homes will be built. It's the ultimate victory of university Trotskyite politics, a long discussion between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the Greens about what position they can take that will sharpen the class struggle. What is the position they can take that will materially disadvantage working-class Australians in the interests of them having the capacity, as Mr Chandler-Mather set out in his lamentable peace in the Jacobin magazine, to have issues to campaign on rather than substantially change the economic, political and policy landscape in Australia so that real change can be made? Thirty thousand homes or 30,000 fewer homes? Where were they when the government increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by the largest amount in its history? Nowhere. They were nowhere. They were posting furiously in their hope that they would be able to persuade Australians that memes, slogans, Instagram posts and Facebook nonsense will somehow—