Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, it is understandable that Senator Back would be surprised that I would be wrong. I was surprised as well. I thought this whole kind of mating ritual dance that was going on between the Liberals and the Greens was going to end up with the Liberal Party been dragged to the left. I thought we were going to stand up in this chamber one day and Senator Abetz was going to walk in wearing his hemp suit and thongs and start singing Kumbaya, and Senator Bernardi and other more conservative senators in this place were going to come in tieless, wearing their T-shirts and being all right. Instead, what we have is the leader of the Greens political party doing fashion shoots, looking like the black Wiggle, in GQ magazine. Senator Di Natale was wearing male Louboutins. I thought I knew a few things about fashion. Clearly, I did not. I did not know there were male Louboutins. I did not know that was a thing.

Senator Xenophon interjecting—

Senator Xenophon is pointing out his Target suit. Senator Xenophon will not wear a suit over $200, which is very different to Senator Di Natale. I believe the Star Trek skivvy that Senator Di Natale chose to wear for his photo shoot cost $269. How do I know this? Because the shoot was designed to sell designer clothes. All the clothes he was wearing had their little price tags attached, because it was a commercial shoot to flog off expensive clothing, the type of clothing that the people we believe we should be here to represent cannot necessarily afford a lot of the time.

That is why we are passionate about these issues. You talk about the one per cent. The one per cent are the people who are wearing $5,000 outfits, doing fashion shoots. The one per cent are the people who can afford the kind of clothing that Senator Di Natale is now modelling for free. And then he comes to this chamber and makes this argument about progressive politics, about progressive values, about what an amazing left-wing warrior he is. There is nothing more bourgeois than trying to pretend you are bourgeois to fit in. There is nothing more bourgeois than that.