Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis, you will get your opportunity to defend Dr Flegg this week. You will get your opportunity to argue why you provided such a miserable turnout in the Queensland election. What I could say is, despite those objections that were run last week by Senator Santoro and Senator Trood, the Queensland public did re-elect the Beattie government for a fourth term on Saturday. I quite openly congratulate Premier Beattie on this historic achievement. It has been 65 years since a Labor government has achieved a fourth term. As a Queensland Labor senator it is truly a humbling experience to find that the state party has received such an endorsement from the voting public and to see that the Labor brand name is still out there well and good, notwithstanding the attacks by Senator Brandis and Senator Trood last week on the Beattie government. This is an important issue and they should have taken it as one last week. Hopefully they will take it as an important issue this week and deal with the issues at hand, particularly the failure of the federal government in this area. But I suspect that they will go on to defend their position from last week. (Time expired)