LIBERAL PARTY

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN (15:42): I rise to talk about the leadership of the Liberal Party of Australia. In January—

An honourable member interjecting:

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. I.K. Hunter): Order!

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN: Thank you, Mr Acting President. I will not ask you at this stage to stop the clock, but I will if interruptions continue.

We saw back in January that the Liberal leaders, except for the federal leader, got together to plan their great recovery and an article was published in The Australian headlined 'Libs to lead fight back from Howard's lost cause'. There was a photograph which featured most of the leaders there. There is, of course, Zed Seselja from the ACT. The ACT Liberals are a wonderful little outfit. They have seven members and somehow they manage to keep coalescing into fractions of three with one in the middle, they are never able to agree on anything and they are constantly changing over their portfolios and their leadership.

We have Mr Mark McArdle from Queensland. You may recall he was the leader who was almost elected on the toss of a coin when there was the high farce of the Liberal Party in Queensland being unable to decide on whom their leader would be, and the leader not even allowing a ballot to allow his challenger to challenge him and so on. The compromise was Mr McArdle. It is hardly any wonder that the Nationals are trying to push aside the Liberals in Queensland and form a joint party, because they have no confidence in them.

In New South Wales, of course, Barry O'Farrell is the leader for the moment, but we know that there has been much speculation that Joe Hockey is going to transfer to the state parliament to become the leader there. Ted Baillieu is the Liberal leader in Victoria. He became leader because Jeff Kennett decided he was not available for a comeback. Then, of course, there is Troy Buswell in Western Australia, who recently became the leader and who participated in this gathering by telephone. Mr Buswell was the one who came back and said he was not available to be leader because of some alleged incidents in his past and then decided he was available to be leader. He became the leader and so united was his party behind him that one of its members immediately quit the party and became an Independent.

Brendan Nelson was not there, of course, I assume because the state leaders are well aware that he will not be leading the Liberal Party to the next election at the federal level and there is some question over whether his election was even legitimate.

In South Australia, of course, we have Martin Hamilton-Smith. Such was the confidence of the Liberal Party room in Mr Hamilton-Smith (the member for Waite in another place) that he could not get any vote bar his own against the member for Frome (Hon. Rob Kerin) when he was the leader. There was not even a spill because Mr Hamilton-Smith could not get a seconder. Mr Hamilton-Smith then served so loyally under the Hon. Iain Evans (the member for Davenport) that he led the overnight coup against the Hon. Mr Evans. So insecure is his leadership that Mr Hamilton-Smith has taken the extraordinary step of sidelining, or demoting, the two most experienced former ministers in the Liberal Party: our own Hon. Mr Lucas, who was, of course, unceremoniously dumped from the leadership of this council, and he is not even in the shadow cabinet; and the Hon. Iain Evans, who has effectively been turned into a very junior player.

One can only assume that Mr Hamilton-Smith is so worried about his own position that he cannot afford to have anyone who might actually know the process of government better than he does and who is able to make a greater contribution put in a position where they can. I contrast this extraordinary string of embarrassments for the Liberal Party—the great Liberal Party of Menzies and Playford which cannot even put together a decent field of leaders anywhere in the country—with the Labor Party. Under the leadership of the Hon. Mr Rann, our own Premier, we have seen the formation of the Council of the Australian Federation to ensure that state governments get together and cooperate rather than the extraordinary division we see within the Liberal Party.

Of course, we have seen the recent meeting of the Council of Australian Governments which is now a genuinely cooperative forum and which will make change that will benefit all Australians rather than an opportunity for political division.

Time expired.