Page 3784 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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some call him Ed Husic. For those who do not know, what happened in that election was that a pamphlet, purporting to come from Eddie Husic, was distributed around the electorate by the Hillsong Church members. Eddie is a Muslim, a Bosnian Muslim, and the pamphlet was basically playing the race card, with misinformation about him.
We have in this country a history of tolerance towards all religions and I think it is a very sad situation when this is occurring during an election campaign.
Members interjecting—
MS MacDONALD: Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, could you please ask that Mrs Burke stop interjecting. I did not interject on her.
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs Dunne): Order! Members.
MS MacDONALD: I am talking about what I consider to be an incredibly serious situation here—
Mr Seselja: Yes, you made a serious allegation and you should back it up.
MS MacDONALD: and there is plenty of backup on that, Mr Seselja. You can go and look at the records that are out there; there is plenty of information out there. I am saying to this place and in this place that as the daughter and granddaughter of Jews who escaped Nazi Germany, I think this behaviour is despicable. It is despicable to put out information intended to draw out racist hatred amongst Australian people. That is what went on in the 2004 election and it was tried again at this election—only it has backfired this time. I would urge all of us in this place to remember at all times, whether it be an election campaign or any other time, that we do not need to draw out that nastiness that sometimes occurs within human behaviour.
Greens—election policies
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (6.10): I want to say a few words about the Greens and their policies—in particular, their drugs policies and their tax policies, which have been drawn out in the last little while. We heard Kerrie Tucker on the radio today squirming when the ACT Greens drug policies were put out there on the public record. The Greens do not like their policies being put out there for public consumption. Kerrie Tucker certainly did not like it today given her reaction to Senator Humphries on the radio this morning.
We have heard the Greens cast the most disgraceful and outrageous slurs on everyone in political life at various stages. They have no qualms about going after anyone and everyone and in quite harsh terms, taking the moral high ground on everything. But it seems that when the attention is turned onto the Greens and their policies they do tend to get a bit defensive. We saw that not just today from Ms Tucker; we also saw it from, apparently, one of her senior campaign managers, hurling abuse at Liberal Party members at a pre-polling booth.
The abuse was based on the fact that the Greens policies on drugs, in particular, but also on tax, were out there for public consumption. These were policies that are on the
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