Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Councillor Pickering is quite well known to Senator Sinodinos over there. He is someone he would have known quite well over the years. But Councillor Pickering does say:

I don't care whether the Mayor has personal vanity reasons or some obscure political objection for not following tradition …

I therefore advise that until the Mayor changes his attitude to acknowledge proper tradition and protocols, I will not attend any citizenship ceremony where he is presiding.

That's right: this Liberal Party councillor is such a staunch defender of Australian values that he would boycott Australia Day citizenship celebrations because of the mayor's refusal to wear red bathrobes—because, as we all know in this chamber, there is nothing more Australian than a man wearing a bathrobe covered in gold chains being present at a citizenship ceremony!

But it does not end there. Our Liberal friend knows what this bathrobe boycott is really about. You see, our friend Bill has:

… a deep-seated commitment for preserving our traditions - despite the 'looney left' and anti-establishment anarchists grotesquely tearing apart Australia …

They are his words. He goes on to say:

Next, the Left scumbags will oppose the honouring of the Australian flag, stop singing the national anthem, stop a prayer opening for council meetings and want Sharia Law introduced … or as I suspect, they are already doing that.

We all know what the sequence looks like. We begin with true Australian values. Then we allow civic leaders to stop wearing their bathrobes, and, before you know it, we are all struggling to eat pork-substitute sausages because our burqa is getting in the way! This Senate and this parliament need to acknowledge that Jerome Laxale, the Mayor of Ryde, needs to be stopped in his plans to destroy Australia!