Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That's much to your benefit! The reality here, though, is that this building is now populated by an incredible cast of characters. This building is like a great big party for the swamp, and no-one at home is invited. It's a party you're not invited to, because it's now completely, wholly owned by a different breed. You've got the career lefty politician person, who can't seem to walk around the building on his own. He's got to have two or three staff members behind him, talking about whatever busy work they're doing in the back room. This character, of course, made an impassioned speech 10 years ago about values and then forgot about them on the basis that we need to see the bigger picture.

You've got the journalists, who don't get away scott-free, congregating in groups around the building, holding microphones, asking really important beltway questions about really important beltway issues—captive to corporate interests though, mind you, and at the whim of their editors—loving to drop a yarn, but in fact they're just writing whatever is deemed suitable by their private equity ownership. They have got 'journalist' on their tag, but if you read the business card, it should probably say 'Labor media adviser in waiting'.

You've also got the lobbyists. You can see them milling around the building dominated by their orange lanyards. This is the lobbyist, sometimes known as the one-term MP, who told his family that he couldn't wait to get out of the building and now spends his days having coffees with MPs and reporting back to his board that he's influencing policy making.

The staffers don't get off scott-free. You see them walking around the building in pants exposing the ankles, with a rainbow lanyard. They can't seem to walk without a coffee in their hand, talking about whatever the minister wants or whatever Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign is looking like. And who can forget the career bureaucrats with more letters after their names than the alphabet? They went to ANU in '93 to study human rights law and ended up in the diversity, equity and inclusion department of one our intel agencies.

These are the cast of characters who are doing damage to this nation.