Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Nash today. I find it quite extraordinary that Senator Macdonald cannot spend five minutes defending Senator Nash and has to resort to trying to insult Labor and pretend that there were various ills on our side. But he cannot spend five minutes defending Senator Nash because she is not defensible. This matter started last week, when a website went live and was then suddenly taken down. On Friday, Senator Nash had the opportunity to answer questions from the Fairfax Media and, guess what, she refused. If it was a mistake or if the website was somehow not quite ready, that is easily defensible. You can show someone a website that is not quite ready. Why would you not put that on the public record on Friday? You would not put it there because it is just not true.

Those in the industry have said that they looked at the website and saw that it was a fine, perfectly good website. Then, when Senator Nash was finally backed into a corner about it, she said, 'Oh, but I was worried that consumers wouldn't be able to understand it.' What an insult it is to suggest that consumers who have been calling for clear food labelling for a very long time suddenly, according to the Assistant Minister for Health, would not be able to understand it.

Senator Nash has now had three opportunities to put the facts on the record. Yesterday, Senator Wong asked three simple questions, one being: 'What did you and your chief of staff have to do with pulling the website down?' Senator Nash told us that she ordered it to be pulled down. Again, Senator Wong had to go back and say, 'You haven't answered the question in relation to what your senior staff member did.' So we finally get a little bit of information around that. But Senator Nash, like the rest of the government ministers, just could not help herself, she had to have a go. She had to imply that Labor's questions were somehow quite out of the ordinary and insulting and should never have been asked. We are just trying to get to the truth of who said what, and when. But she could not help herself yesterday, she had to be condescending.

Then, last night at around nine o'clock, she made a statement saying, 'Oops, I made a mistake.' After trying to tell us she was above reproach and had got it all right, she comes in and suddenly admits that her chief of staff has shares in the company—