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

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I did not realise that Senator Ryan, who I understand has quite an honourable record of being fairly enlightened and is one of the few liberals left in the Liberal Party, would get up and support his outrageous conservative, racist colleagues in New South Wales. It is interesting that he would get up and do that.

In that election in 2004 the Liberal Party and their conservative allies within the seat of Greenway used the racist material to quite good effect against the Labor Party candidate, Eddie Husic. As I said, not only did we suffer a significant swing against us but we also had a significant informal vote because people were led to believe that they were voting for some Muslim extremist to go into parliament. I want to say that Eddie Husic, who is quite an honourable man, is of Bosnian Muslim extraction. I think his family is European in ethnic origins, but the Liberal Party were targeting him. I think Scott Morrison, the spokesman for immigration in the other House, was executive director of the New South Wales Liberal Party at the time.