Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I accept your admonishment, Mr Acting Deputy President. I'm sure that Senator Brown, as a representative of the great state of Tasmania, agrees with me that we need to be fostering this attitude of reward for effort, encouraging rather than shaming people who wish to make a go of things in this country.

I take issue also with a couple of the things that Senator O'Neill mentioned in her speech—namely about people who can afford to buy $700 shirts. I don't know many, if any, people who would go down to the shop and pick up a $700 set of threads. If they do, good on them. This outrageous example of pointing to someone who buys a $700 shirt and then grouping everyone who is a small or medium business operator with the big end of town as nasty business people—this talk of billionaires and millionaires—who are trying to undercut the worker is madness. The people we are talking about here—people who run businesses, who employ other Australians—are not in that category at all. To inject all this rhetoric into this debate and try to paint a picture of a society in Australia where you've got lots of people drive around in Bentleys and everyone else having to hitchhike is just ridiculous.

So I don't accept the points that Senator O'Neill made in that respect. It is just that: rhetoric. It is just trying to make this debate more emotive than it needs to be. We need to be real about it and we should get real about this sort of stuff. Getting out into our regional communities, where there are lots of small-business people—farmers and the like—you would understand that this $700-shirt business is not real. It is just part of this flourish that they're putting into this.

If I can turn to Tasmania for a moment: I've been observing the state campaign in Tasmania. We're in a state election campaign. One of the Labor Party's candidates in Tasmania, a fellow by the name of David O'Byrne, who was a minister in the last government in Tasmania, penned a—

Senator Polley interjecting—

I beg your pardon—I missed that interjection.