Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to his earlier answers, where he has defended his industry minister describing One Nation as 'more sophisticated'. One Nation in Western Australia has now said the gay community across the world has developed a covert mind-control program to campaign for marriage equality, 'using many of the strategies developed for the Soviets and then the Nazis'. Does the Prime Minister stand by his earlier answers? How long can the Turnbull government continue to make excuses for One Nation?

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Deakin is warned; the Minister for the Environment and Energy will cease interjecting.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the Labor Party preferences and receives preferences from the Greens Party, which advocates legalising drugs of addiction. It advocates abandoning the US alliance. It advocates de-industrialising Australia. And I do not believe the Labor Party agrees with any of those policies. The fact of the matter is that in a preferential system, parties will reach preference deals in order to maximise their chances of success. The Labor Party has done that, and the coalition parties have done that, too. I might draw to the honourable member's attention, if he has not seen it, the extraordinary, threatening speech of Senator Kim Carr in the Senate today—where he threatens—directly—Senator Hinch over an alleged preference deal that the Labor Party did with Senator Hinch, in which he claims that Senator Hinch had agreed to certain untold matters on industrial law. So the reality is, the Labor Party is using its preferences—and doing it very openly in the Senate—to threaten Independent senators.