Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Something fishy entirely about these stories. I follow a couple of the LNP members on Twitter, the member for Wright and the member for Dawson. Immediately they started trotting out the same party lines. The member for Fraser is a bit of an expert on Twitter; I think there is a rule of thumb that the more there is one voice putting out a proposition, the less thought has been given to the proposition by the person putting out the idea. That applies to both sides of the chamber, I would suggest.

The member for Dawson and the member for Wright were immediately putting out these lines about the supertrawler. When you listened to the speeches of the member for Herbert and the member for Leichhardt, you could hear that they were floundering when it came to the logic of what they were actually doing. They were in deep water; they were lost. The day before, the member for Dawson had said, 'We must stop this supertrawler.' He backflipped straightaway and said, 'Oh, no, the party lines are that I must say this.' I know that is tough for a backbencher, when you are being asked by the people in headquarters to parrot—or parrotfish—some lines. Nevertheless, that is what he did.

I am not sure what we pay the clerks of the House, but it is not enough when they have to hear 30 people give the same speech—the same speech that none of them particularly believe. Those are tough yards. They should have some sort of danger money built into such speeches.

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