MARK DREYFUS QC MP
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
MELBOURNE
TUESDAY, 14 MAY 2019
SUBJECTS: Greens Port Arthur conspiracy candidate; Scott Morrison failing to disendorse homophobic candidates
MARK DREYFUS, SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It's disgraceful that it took the Greens Party more than 24 hours to remove a candidate who seems to think that the Port Arthur massacre did not happen. This is what he said there's only one sure thing in my mind, Bryant didn't do it. It's apparently good enough for the leader of the Greens Party, Richard di Natale to stand up and attack Pauline Hanson for her doubts expressed publicly about the Port Arthur massacre. This is what Richard di Natale had to say about that he said: disgraceful. And it's just so disrespectful to the many victims of the Port Arthur massacre. So you've got to ask why did it take the Greens Party as long as it did to sack this candidate for those dreadful remarks? Actually, why did they only just now do it, some five minutes before a Labor press conference, to get around to doing this? It took Labor pressure to make sure that the Greens Party did the right thing. It's symptomatic of this Greens Party, that they behave in this chaotic way. It's symptomatic of this Greens Party that they pre-select candidates with this kind of view in the first place. And yet again we see that the Greens Party just cant be counted on to do the right thing. They're quite happy to say all sorts of criticisms, they're quite happy to take all sorts of positions, but when it comes to the crunch, they either don't get there quick enough or they don't do it at all. We've got here a political party that cant be counted on, on things that matter that cant be counted on to do the things that they say they are going to do. We've seen it repeatedly over the past decade or so in Australian politics, that the Greens Party's leaders are quite happy to claim positions they're quite happy to say they are going to do things but when it comes to the crunch they just cant be counted on.
There's one other matter I wanted to raise, which is that we've seen some serious allegations against Liberal candidates emerge over the last few days, in particular Peter Bain the Liberal candidate for Fraser, Alan Green, the Liberal candidate for Greenway, Gladys Liu, the Liberal candidate for Chisholm, and one could say Gurpal Singh, the former Liberal candidate for Scullin. All of these Liberal candidates have spoken dreadful homophobic comments. But all we've seen from Scott Morrison is running away. Ducking questions about all four of these candidates, saying pathetically, limply, that it's just a matter for the party. Or it's a party matter, or that's party processes will take care of that. Well it's not good enough. Scott Morrison's actually got to face up to the fact that his party, the party that he is a leader of, is pre-selecting candidates with these dreadful homophobic views. And Id ask how hard is it for Scott Morrison to stand up for the rights of LGBTI people in this country? How hard is it for Scott Morrison to actually condemn the view that gay people are going to hell? It's just not good enough from Scott Morrison. He cant say it's a matter for party processes. What he's got to say is what is his view. What he's got to do, is start to lead and start to explain how it is that the party that he leads has pre-selected people with these shocking views? It's actually revealing of the true nature of the Liberal Party that it would pre-select not one, not two, not three but four and probably more candidates who've got these shocking views about LGBTI people. It's time for the Prime Minister of Australia to stand up and show us actually that he condemns those views, that he can say directly that those kinds of homophobic views have got no place in Australian politics and certainly should play no part in the politics of what is pretending to be a mainstream political party, the Liberal Party of Australia but is actually every day revealing itself to be a party of the extreme right.
Thank you very much.
