Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He was the ambassador to Israel. He has strong links to the Jewish community, and he must be appalled. He must be appalled by what is happening to the Liberal Party. It's no surprise, given the by-election reality that the Liberal Party is facing in Bennelong, that they came in here with this fiction that somehow they didn't know and that somehow they were unaware that we were talking about white supremacy rhetoric, white supremacy positioning and white supremacy ideology when we were looking at that motion moved by Senator Hanson yesterday. What is their excuse? The excuse from Minister Cormann was that it was an administrative error. An administrative error? Come on. This is the man who's the minister for finance. He's in charge of the nation's finances and he can't even manage a simple motion that comes before the Senate? It was a motion, as Senator Hinch said, that was only two lines. It wasn't hard to read.

What was Minister Porter's argument? Minister Porter's argument today was to blame the help. What a classic Liberal approach: blame the help. They say, 'It's the staff who got me into this trouble.'