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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-07-24 Daily Xml
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LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA

Mr KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (15:30): I like to follow the member for Stuart. He is without a doubt my favourite member in this house. He is entertaining, funny, not always factual but good fun to listen to. My phone has been running hot since the Mayo preselection and I just wanted to share with the house a few of the stories of the campaign.

Members interjecting:

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: The moment I mention Mayo, they go into a panic. It's over.

Mr Pederick: Who was your man?

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: My man? My man was Iain Evans because I desperately wanted that by-election in Davenport to prove a point, and I am about to. The fascinating thing about the Liberal Party is the general decay around the edges. You are seeing a former minister and former candidate, Robert Brokenshire, re-enter the parliament in the upper house in a different party. That is one down. He was talked about as being a potential deputy leader of the Liberal Party. He has joined Family First and abandoned the Liberal Party.

The former president, Bob Randall (former member for Henley Beach, as I think it was called at the time) also joined Family First. What surprises me about the general decay in the Liberal Party is the way that they treat their former members, former leaders and their current leaders. I was fascinated to hear from people who were calling me that the Leader of the Opposition's press secretary, Kevin Naughton, who used to masquerade as a journalist for the Sunday Mail and the ABC, was actually putting out press releases for Mr Basham, who I think is a dairy farmer, although I could be wrong about that. I understand that Mr Basham, an excellent candidate, a very personable, 'blokey' bloke with family, was a bit worried. What I find fascinating is that the Leader of the Opposition did not back the member for Davenport to leave this place and, not only that, he wanted to scuttle his career in Canberra as well. He used his press secretary to go after him.

The other phone call I had about the Mayo preselection, which I thought was fascinating, was the involvement of the members for Bragg, Finniss and, everyone's favourite, the federal member for Sturt, Chris Pyne. Chris Pyne, I understand, was a former associate of Mr Briggs. When he first joined the Liberal Party, Mr Briggs joined the moderates (the 'wets', or whatever you want to call them), also known as the left in the Liberal Party. This group was very upset when Mr Briggs defected and joined the conservatives. Mr Briggs wanted to have a very interesting career with the former prime minister as the architect of WorkChoices, the person who tried to impose unfair work conditions on Australians, and probably he was one of the architects of the Liberal Party's defeat.

Mr Pyne said publicly that he played absolutely no involvement in the Mayo preselection and that he and Nick Minchin were as one on this issue of non-involvement, which I find fascinating because, when Mr Pyne was asked on 891 by Mr Matthew Abraham whether he had made any phone calls in relation to the Mayo preselection to eligible electors about whom they should vote for, Mr Pyne refused to answer.

I have also heard from an excellent source, which I take to be gospel, that there were over 300 or 400 members of the Mayo branch who were eligible to vote in this preselection—the first ever held in Mayo because previously we have hardly ever had plebiscites—and this is the first time there has been a contest for Mayo. Apparently, the candidates were finding that almost 30 to 40 per cent of the membership—now I could be exaggerating and I do not want to get ahead of myself—were actually saying that they did not know they were members, that someone else had signed them up.

I am going to write a letter to the AEC because, if it is true that people who have voted have not known they were members of the Liberal Party, perhaps the election of Mr Briggs is invalid. It is surprising to think that people who have been telephoned or doorknocked and asked, 'Who are you voting for in the Mayo preselection?' have said, 'I'm voting Liberal.' 'No, who are you voting for in the preselection?' and they said 'Am I eligible? Can anyone vote?' They are told, 'No, you have to be a member of the Liberal Party.' They replied, 'Oh, I didn't know I was a member of the Liberal Party.'

I have been sent a few names of people who have had their doors knocked on by people who say that they were approached by potential candidates to vote without them knowing that they were members; received no mail, paid no dues, paid no fees, may have had fees paid for them. If that is true, it is corrupt.

Time expired.

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