Nick Champion (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government with no standards and no shame. They've engaged in maladministration. They've engaged in rorting, and it's all with the express purpose of electing people to this place who should not be here. They won by rorting government money to sporting clubs to get swings in seats that were critical to this government's election. It has the taint of illegitimacy over it, the taint of complete illegitimacy over it. This behaviour is obscene banana-republic style behaviour. If you heard about it happening in another country there'd be a lot of tut-tutting from those opposite. We know that they've engaged in match fixing. We know that they've engaged in cheating. That's what happens when you take the winner—say, Salisbury council, who got 90 out of 100—and make them a loser. It's cheating. If you take a losing club and make them a winner that's cheating, isn't it? We'd say that was wrong in any other field of human endeavour, but, apparently, if it's about electing a government it's somehow okay. I think we all know that it's not okay. It's not just that Salisbury council, one of the finest councils in the state of South Australia, who got 90 out of 100 for their application and who, in a press release, tell us they spent a hundred hours preparing that application, for what? Why would they have the highest levels of public administration when you do not? (Time expired)