Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on this bill and the amendment that we have proposed. I will take a moment to reflect on the member for Throsby's contribution because I know that this is an issue which is very important to him. He has been reasonably brave, it has to be said, in defiance of his party's position on this through their processes, in the caucus and in public explaining that he does not agree—and I think he did it very well in his contribution to the parliament just now—with the direction that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship are taking on this matter.

What the member for Throsby did not say in his contribution is that he supports the bill. I think it reflects very poorly on the Labor Party that they have got to this point with this bill. When I first became involved in politics my first involvement at a federal level in an election campaign of a serious nature was Trish Worth's Adelaide campaign in 2001. Trish Worth served in this parliament for some time and it is fair to say she had a humanitarian bent when it came to this issue. In the 2001 election campaign the Australian Labor Party, its candidate Tim Stanley, its campaign manager and people involved in the campaign, including the current member for Adelaide, sought to make the most vicious politics of this issue against Trish Worth. They sought to make the most outrageous suggestions about members of this side and about people involved with the Liberal Party—to the extent that a current very senior serving union official in South Australia, who may have been the union official who went to a gunfight with the Premier but forgot his gun a couple of months ago, made claims—

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