Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

When we have a growing debt and deficit problem in this country and a growing youth unemployment situation in this country, when people are battling their family budgets with the cost of living, we have this sort of question from he who would be—what?—No. 3 in any federal Labor government. This is the sort of non-policy issue that Senator Conroy seeks to ventilate at question time. He has an opportunity to ask the government about finetuning policy, about getting good policies onto the public agenda, and what does Senator Conroy do? He goes grubbing through the newspapers, looks at the gossip column and then sees if he can make a question up about that. He then seeks to sell himself to the Australian people as some potential responsible leader or deputy leader of the government in this place. (Time expired)