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

I withdraw that comment, but Senator Hutchins does not tell the truth about the member for Greenway. He does a complete bucket job. This is a hatchet man. The former leader of Senator Hutchins’s party had this to say about him:

He’s a slow-talking, slow-moving Sussex Street clone. His sole claim to high office in the Labor Party was that he ran the truck drivers’ union in NSW. He’s a machine man, so they made him a Senator and President of the NSW Branch.

I did not say that; it was said by the former leader of Senator Hutchins’s party. Mark Latham had this opinion of this senator. And Mark Latham’s derision of Senator Hutchins continues:

Hutchins received just six votes out of seventeen—a terrible outcome, a landslide against the State President, the titular head of the faction. Leo couldn’t believe it. Under pressure, he normally has a red melon, but today he looked like an exploding beetroot.

Senator Hutchins has lost everyone from his faction. Leo McLeay, Senator Forshaw and Michael Lee have all departed the parliament. He is out there on his own, bleating in the wilderness, and he can do nothing but dump buckets of bile on very good members of our House.

Senator Hutchins is a member of the ‘bonehead faction’. I did not say that; it is a quote from Mark Latham’s book, The Latham Diaries. It is what Mark Latham, the former leader of the party, actually said about the senator; it did not come from our side of the chamber. This book is the most extraordinary account of how pitiful the machine mechanics of Senator Hutchins are. His attack on the extraordinary member for Greenway is just further evidence of what a tawdry effort this man can come up with. This man was president of the TWU, but he has never held a truck driving licence, let alone driven a truck. When he had the opportunity to do something really great for the trucking industry with the GST—removing wholesale tax from people’s rigs, spare tyres and fuel and improving the diesel fuel rebate—what do you think he did? Senator Hutchins voted against the GST—the best thing that ever happened to truckies in our country. This is the character of the man. I back the member for Greenway all the way.

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