Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I retract that then, but he was not much of a performer. He was never at the cutting edge of the Howard government. You now have the C grade of the Liberal Party in the leadership position. Do you know why? Because the lunatics have taken over the asylum. That is why. They are the madmen of the Liberal Party—and it is mostly men, although there are some mad women. There are real problems here which the Australian public are onto. They know what you are about and they know that you are a huge problem to this economy. To come here and argue that you care about ordinary working Australians is the height of hypocrisy.

Let us have a look at what the Liberal Party were really about in government. They have a ‘Direct Action Plan’—they are really good at names—for a policy that does nothing and they had ‘Work Choices’ for a policy which gave workers no choices. It gave them nothing, no choices at all. That is what they gave workers. Where were the voices for the workers on the other side, the champions of the workers we are supposedly hearing from now? Where were their voices when Senator Minchin crawled down to the HR Nicholls Society and apologised for not taking enough rights away from workers? They apologised to the business groups in this country. Where were the voices when Senator Minchin claimed he wanted another round of industrial relations reform to take more rights away from workers? They were silent—no heart, no capacity to understand what workers need. Where were the voices in the coalition when Senator Minchin was talking about pulling down the whole edifice of the awards system, including the industrial commission? Those voices were silent, the same as the backflippers on your side of the Senate who know that we should have a decent environmental policy. They backflipped and left their mates in the lurch. They left them on their own when the crunch came, when the loonies took over the asylum. That is what has happened over on the other side. (Time expired)