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

I hear ‘Andrew Laming’ over there. Thank you for the interjection, Senator Marshall. Why would Andrew Laming be mentioned? Andrew Laming has been under investigation for the past six months, an investigation instituted by the wife of the person who is now the Deputy Premier of Queensland. A member of the Labor Party six months ago instituted this inquiry as a police officer. It has already been demonstrated clearly that the two other people under investigation have been cleared, and one can only wonder to what depths the Labor Party will sink in their march towards federal government.

The Queensland Labor Party has also spawned Karen Ehrmann, who is in jail for electoral fraud. It has also spawned Merri Rose, a trusted adviser and close confidante of Premier Peter Beattie and a minister in his government for many years. She has just been released from jail on blackmail charges. It has also spawned people like Gordon Nuttall, who is under investigation for fraud and corruption and who was a minister until a short while ago in the Queensland government. It has also spawned people like Pat Purcell, who has allegedly broken the law by physically assaulting his staff. This is the Labor government we have in Queensland, spawning those people. I will not go into Brian Burke, Theophanous, Milton Orkopoulos, Bob Collins and Peter Duncan, some of whom have not yet been convicted. I do not suggest that they are guilty of charges, but certainly the charges against Orkopoulos and Bob Collins are very, very serious.

This is the party that has spawned these people. I acknowledge that there are many, many good people in the Labor Party; I am not suggesting anything for a moment about any of them. But I am suggesting that the party that gets us premiers like Brian Burke and gets us ministers like Merri Rose, Keith Wright and Bill D’Arcy is the same party which, in my state of Queensland, less than two months ago attempted to take away from Queenslanders the right to free speech. The Labor Party in Queensland legislated in the Queensland parliament to make it a criminal offence for a council to have a plebiscite on its future. Not only would it be an offence, but any councillor who had the temerity to suggest a poll would be fined and, if he did not pay the fine, would be thrown into jail and would be made to pay. This is the Labor Party. Fortunately, the Howard government used its constitutional powers to override the Queensland parliament in that particular piece of legislation so that it is no longer an offence to have a poll in Queensland on the future of a council. But the Labor Party, in the most undemocratic piece of legislation ever brought before any parliament in Australia in its parliamentary history, tried to stop Queenslanders from having a say—on pain of imprisonment, if anyone should contrive against that.

This Queensland Labor Party has spawned those people I mentioned—and Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd and Mr Swan have been around for a long time, as has Anna Bligh, the new Premier, and all three of them were around when it was as clear as the nose on your face that Queensland would have problems with water in the future. But Mr Rudd, Mr Goss, Ms Bligh and Wayne Swan did nothing about it. In fact, the previous National Party government had put aside a bit of land for a dam, and the Goss government, advised by Mr Rudd, took that off the burner.

Have a look at Queensland—the state from which Mr Rudd and Mr Swan hale—and the public health scandals. Remember Dr Patel? He is on charges currently—if they can ever find him. Mr Beattie had the opportunity to bring him back from the USA but declined that because he himself was having an election a few weeks later, so they did not bother to get him back. Dr Patel is alleged to have caused the deaths of many Queenslanders. Why? Because the Labor government in Queensland cannot be trusted with administering even a health system. In spite of the billions and billions of dollars given to the Queensland government by the federal government for health and other matters, the Queensland government have not got a health system which you would feel safe in. The Dr Death scandal is one that will hound Mr Beattie and Ms Bligh to their political graves.

The Traveston dam travesty is another indication of the failure of the Labor Party in Queensland to properly administer its jurisdiction. Anna Bligh has been caught telling mistruths about the Senate report in relation to that dam. I saw a media release from Anna Bligh the other day saying that the Senate report into the Traveston dam ‘vindicates the Queensland government’. It did anything but vindicate the Queensland government. It was full of criticism. But Ms Bligh, the new Premier of our state, could not even distinguish truth from untruth on that issue.

This is the sort of area from which the Labor Party is launching itself into operation of the federal government. So, if the opinion polls are to be believed, every government in Australia will be held by Labor. You can imagine the result. The GST will go up because there will be no-one to stop it, no-one to fight against it.