Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Right on cue, the shadow spokesman on small business comes in. I cannot wait for his contribution to this debate. He has dropped out of the top 100. It is 510 days today since he last asked me a question in this parliament.

Who else have we got in this economic team? We have the Leader of the National Party, who would be the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. There was a poll conducted on the Leader of the National Party and also on the Leader of the National Party in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, and some other National Party identities. They could not find him. No-one knew who the Leader of the National Party was. They dispatched the CSI team to look for a little bit of evidence of his existence; a little bit of DNA here or there. But there was no sign of him. He disappeared without a trace. Anthony LaPaglia could not find him. The CSI team was looking for him. ‘Who is he? Who? No, I don’t know him.’ I have a bit of advice for the Leader of the National Party. He should change his name by deed poll to ‘Don’t Know’. If he changed his name by deed poll to ‘Don’t Know’ then his recognition would go up fourfold, because that was the most popular choice in that poll: ‘Who is the Leader of the National Party? Don’t know.’

People do not know who the Leader of the National Party is and they do not know what the coalition stands for. It is all over the place. It is completely opportunistic. The Liberal Party once presented itself as the party of small business, who Bob Menzies described as the forgotten people. Well, you have forgotten small business. You have betrayed small business. It is only through the active and determined support of the Rudd Labor government that small business has a fighting chance in this country to get through the economic downturn. You should be ashamed of yourselves. (Time expired)

See this speech in context