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

I'm happy to withdraw. The problem here is that propagating these extremist views could lead one to think that the propagator of extremist views is indeed an extremist, and accommodating extreme views and conspiracy theories is a sign of the ill-health of the political institution that allows it to happen. It is a sign of their unfitness to govern. It is a sign that they don't take the relationship between public policy and their role seriously and that they engage the most loopy, far right, extremist and kooky views in order to suck up to an emerging and stronger group within their political party.

I understand that is uncomfortable. I understand that people don't want to hear it, because they want the easy ride in politics. They don't want to have to call out extremism. They don't want to have to call out bad behaviour, because it is so much easier to do the back slapping, to say, 'She'll be right mate; don't worry about that,' and to surf in on the support of some of the nastiest, extreme and kooky elements in Australian politics. The problem is that it then infects other areas of public policy. You can see it in the way that not just the small group over here but almost all of them approach questions on climate and energy policy—the kind of grandiose claims and wild assertions made, for example, by Mr Joyce in his quixotic tilting-at-windmills campaign against sections of the energy industry. He engages in the same wild rhetoric and the same conspiracy theory behaviour.

You talk about pandemics; this is a pandemic of kookiness that has taken over the thinking of Liberals and Nationals not just in Queensland but right around the country. If Mr Dutton is ever to be taken seriously as a leader of an alternative government, he needs to take seriously his responsibility as a political leader, and that is that you don't back the cranks. You don't back the conspiracy theorists. You draw a line. This political party should stand condemned for its incapacity for party discipline and a focus on the public interest and for instead engaging in some of the worst and nastiest elements of Australian politics. Their conduct makes them utterly unfit to stand in the mantle of what was a once proud set of conservative parties. Now it is a conspiracy theorist rump, and Mr Dutton stands condemned for his incapacity to lead.