Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to also discuss Senator Hutchins’s extraordinary statements in the other place at one o’clock this afternoon. He made an extraordinary attack on our very good member for Greenway, Louise Markus. This senator has a history of going into the other place and bucketing members under privilege, saying things that he would not say outside this place and abusing the very privileges given in this place. For 10 years I have been on the receiving end of the buckets from Steve Hutchins. My local media just ignore his media releases. His media releases are so puerile, vindictive, mean, nasty and downright defamatory that they are completely ignored.

I wish to send the same warning to anyone thinking of printing anything that the senator has to say in the other place: the allegations he is making against the member for Greenway are totally extraordinary and at odds with the character of the person that the people of Greenway elected. This is an extraordinary woman who has given 23 years of community service to the people of Blacktown. She has worked with the Department of Social Security, with TAFE, with the Wesley Mission and, yes, with Hillsong Emerge. Since when has being affiliated with a church been such a public crime that those opposite will smear the reputation of a conservative woman? Yes, I am a Catholic woman. Does that make me so reprehensible and tied up with anything the church does that I must be somehow vilified for it?

Those on the other side of politics have so lost faith that they will attack anything of value and goodness. In the time that I have known the member for Greenway, she has never, ever preached her religion to me. She shows her deep faith, compassion and beliefs by what she does. She never says a thing about her beliefs, but she acts out her beliefs. The same cannot be said of Senator Hutchins. He just buckets people. He lies, he carries on with absolutely spurious allegations—

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