Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If I have offended the lady, I do withdraw my comment. Also, you are incorrect, Senator Joyce: Earl was Huey’s younger brother. Huey went up into the senate—Huey was assassinated—and Earl took over as the governor.

The coalition is probably in the history books, particularly the National Party. There seem to be all these attempts to have some sort of marriage effected, but people in the National Party are resisting it because they believe that that will inevitably lead to their decline because of their identity. Some people say that, in country Australia, if there is no National Party candidate to vote for then people will vote Labor. Why is that? It is because, once upon a time, that great party—not that I ever voted for it—that was once called the Country Party used to represent rural and regional Australia. Where is the National Party now? There are very few of them left in the House of Representatives and very few of them left in here.

They have been abandoned, as they have abandoned their natural constituency. The people have turned now to the only party that will look after their interests and make sure that they have access to services so long denied them by those in the coalition in power. We are the only party that is able to look after them. Our people, including Senator Stephens here, who is a farmer—and I notice, Senator Ian Macdonald, you did not mention a number of our people on the front bench who have a regional and rural background—are there and they are going to look after the interests of regional and rural Australia. Mr Acting Deputy President, I told your namesake that, if he wants to make sure that we do that, I invite it and welcome it, because these people are indeed entitled to services as much as the rest of us are, and over the years this has not been available to them. We may have failed them, as well as those opposite, but they indeed failed them significantly because they thought it was more important to have a pony club canteen than to have a medical centre or to improve rural health.