Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Thursday, I tried to do the Prime Minister a favour. He was off to Ballarat for the regional summit, and I suggested he needed to take some talking points with him. He needed talking points on road funding because they aren't investing in western Victorian roads like they should be. I said that he would need to think about social licence when it comes to transmission lines that they are trying to put through farms; social license about windfarms, which had just been imposed on local communities; and coming with some sort of drought funding package because he's delivered nothing for our drought-stricken farmers in western Victoria and in South Australia. He also would need to talk to the Premier about the fire services levy, which is a tax that has been imposed on volunteers who fight fires. They go out and keep the community safe, and here's the Victorian state Labor government taxing them for doing that. I thought that, if he took those talking points along to Ballarat, he might be ready for what he might get confronted with.

The PM isn't really listening at the moment, so what happened? He went to Ballarat, he didn't have his proper talking points with them and he got run out of town. There were five trucks and tractors. They all queued up and they ran him out of town. We asked the PM about it today in question time—just a simple question. 'PM, why were you run out of town by tractors?' He couldn't answer. As a matter of fact, he tried to talk about everything else but the question we asked him. I got up and took a point of order, as you do, and said, 'PM, get back to the question and tell us why you were run out of town.' He then went on and blamed everyone else. I interjected—and I must admit it was an interjection that the Speaker looked upon and probably frowned at a little bit—and I said quite loudly that it reminded me a little bit of a scene out of Chariots of Fire, referring to that one where they run along the beach pretty quickly, That was what I was reminded of by the PM scooting out of Ballarat with the tractors following him.

The PM must have had a little bit of a glass jaw. The Treasurer seemed to laugh, and every behind me laughed, but the PM just turned around and, out of the blue, said, 'You're a coward.' I just thought, gosh, we're having a little bit of lightheartedness. It's theatre. The PM just went bang. Of course I was very keen for the PM to withdraw that. I don't know whether he did or not because my Chariots of Fire remark led to the Speaker removing me from the chamber. But I hope the PM will withdraw and I hope the PM will begin to listen to the people of western Victoria