Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know that Anna Bligh is going to become the Premier of Queensland and I know that you and your faction, Big Bill Ludwig’s faction, do not want Anna Bligh there, do you? So I can understand why you are a fraction confused today, Senator Ludwig. You really should be out working the phones to try to make sure that Queensland does not have its first female Premier. For that reason, I guess I can understand the disjointed nature of your contribution and the very confused way in which it was put.

On our side of parliament we do consult very widely, and Senator Abetz, although only the representative minister here, does understand the question and has spoken with the industry, as I know Minister McGauran has. I have to say as well that, on our side of parliament, we do have people who are actually experts in this field. I refer you to my colleague in the other place Wilson Tuckey, who was for several years the head of the racing industry, the equine competition industry, in Western Australia. We have those sorts of people on our side of parliament because we do attract people to parliament from a wide range of walks of life.

On that note, I was interested to see in the paper today that, of the 20 people standing for the Senate for the Labor Party at the next election, 15 of them have a union background, four of them are staffers and one is a state MP. So, of the 20 candidates from the ALP wanting to come into this chamber, not one of them has ever had a real job. They are simply union hacks, political staffers or state Labor MPs looking for greener pastures.