Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This report relates to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We have seen a number of important broadcasts over the last week on the South Australian election. Mr Acting Deputy President, you might recall that last week I spoke about some concerns in South Australia over the fact that the Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, Mrs Redmond, had arrived in Canberra unannounced to have a meeting with the Prime Minister on the issue of water. I think most Australians were quite concerned that she had decided to hop on a plane at the crack of dawn without telling anybody in Canberra that she was coming up here. It was a particularly busy day because we had the President of Indonesia here, and that was being widely broadcast on the ABC. Nobody could have missed the fact that the President of Indonesia was in town, and there was a great deal of concern about Mrs Redmond’s visit.

Some people had started to come to the conclusion that perhaps Mrs Redmond was not ready for government. On the ABC this week we saw some reports about continuing concerns over that issue. The candidate that Mrs Redmond beat for the leadership of the Liberal Party, Vicki Chapman, took 24 hours to announce that she was not intending to run against Mrs Redmond for the leadership of the party. We all know that in political parties division is death.