Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Hansard source

I am disappointed that Senator O’Brien made that interjection. I was going to keep my comments short but, with this sort of interjection when we are trying to get through things quickly, for Senator O’Brien to be doing this I think is bitterly, bitterly disappointing. I hope that he admonishes himself because he is after all a whip. That was a very disappointing interjection.

I will talk about the public meeting that Senator Colbeck talked about in Torquay on 19 January this year. There were, on my estimate, about 600 people at this public meeting. As Senator Colbeck said, it started in a very small hall and finished with a fantastic, old-fashioned public meeting with a ute, the loudspeaker on the back and 600 people expressing their anger at what had occurred—an old-fashioned town hall meeting which was very exciting for those who were there.

Where was Mr Cheeseman? Was Mr Cheeseman, the current member for Corangamite, there? Was he there to stand up and say: ‘I’m going to do something for the fishers in Corangamite. Am I going to fight; am I taking the government on.’ No, of course he was not. Typical behaviour—there, slinking around at the back of the meeting, was one of his staff members. Slinking at the back of the meeting while the member did not have the intestinal fortitude to front up to those 600 fishers and make it work. That staff member, who is known to me but will remain nameless, then rang the local newspaper, the Geelong Advertiser, and said, ‘There are 100 people there, all there for political reasons’—100 hundred people when 600 were there.

Senator Colbeck and others, including Sarah Henderson, the Liberal Party candidate for Corangamite, put together petitions. There were some 8½ thousand signatures on petitions from all over the country and Sarah Henderson did a marvellous job in getting those signatures. I have read some remarkable things in my 16-some years in the Senate and the other place, but nothing compares with the speech from the member for Corangamite in the other place on Monday, 15 March. In this speech there was some remarkable gilding of the lily in relation to the work that he had done in engaging with the local community. He did not engage with anyone. The only time he engaged was when Sarah Henderson, the Liberal Party candidate for Corangamite, started meeting with the fishers and the charter boat operators and talking about this. He then became remotely interested.

It was fascinating. I have never at a public meeting or working with community groups bowled up to someone and said, ‘How do you vote?’ As an elected representative you are not there to ascertain how someone votes; you are there to ascertain whether you can assist in matters of concern to them. In this remarkable speech—and I do suggest that honourable senators get hold of a copy of it because it is quite remarkable—we have Mr Cheeseman talking about his work with Steve Burton, who is the commodore of the Torquay Angling club, and Shane Korth, the secretary of the club. I met both of those gentlemen. I can assure you that I did not ask them how they voted. I said, ‘What can we do to address the issues that you have?’ I did not say ‘How do you vote?’ During this speech Mr Cheeseman was waxing lyrical about the amount of consultation that he had had. Just listen to this:

Today I would particularly like to thank and acknowledge Steve and Shane for their efforts.

Steve and Shane worked, I can tell you, but Mr Cheeseman did absolutely nothing.