Mr VAILE(5.53 p.m.) —This evening in the adjournment debate I want to bring to the attention of the House the results of a fairly important by-election that was held in New South Wales last Saturday—the by-election for the state seat of Port Macquarie. For the information of members, the successful candidate in that by-election was the National Party's Robert Oakeshott, whom some members of this staff, particularly staff of this place, would know quite well. Robert worked here for the last three years in my office as a media research officer and, latterly, he worked in the government members' secretariat.

The more interesting thing to note, particularly following the outcome of the by-election on Saturday, is some of the comments that have been made by some of the senior Labor politicians in New South Wales about the swings—who they went to and who they went against. In the field that stood for the by-election in Port Macquarie, there was no Labor candidate. The Premier of New South Wales decided that Port Macquarie was not a good enough seat for Labor to inject any funds into a campaign and stand a candidate. They did not think they could win, notwithstanding that they crowed about the fact that in 1995 at the March general election they received 38 per cent of the vote.

Subsequent to that, the sitting National Party member resigned and the Premier called a by-election that took about three months to contest. It was a fairly lengthy period and a long campaign, yet there was no sign of any Labor candidate. Some of the other votes that were achieved in the election were quite interesting as well.

I go back to the comments that were made by one of the Labor Party senior ministers in New South Wales who talked about a swing against the National Party in the seat of Port Macquarie. But what he failed to realise was that there were a number of Independent candidates. One of those Independent candidates was a former high profile Liberal Party member who actually stood against me in the federal election in 1993, one John Barrett. John Barrett managed to achieve 32 per cent of the vote. Our candidate, the ultimate winner, the National Party's Robert Oakeshott, achieved 46.8 per cent of the vote. According to my arithmetic, that is almost 79 per cent of the vote.

If we did not have Greens, the Shooters Party and AAFI, it would have left only 21 per cent for the Labor Party to win if they had stood a candidate. But they were too gutless and they wimped out because they knew what the result would be. They saw what happened in the federal by-election in Lindsay and decided that they would not embarrass themselves and stand a candidate.

With 900 votes still to count yesterday, the National Party's Robert Oakeshott got 46.8 per cent of the vote, the conservative Independent, Barrett, got 32 per cent of the vote and the Shooters Party got 6.9 per cent of the vote—and this is the first real outing for the Shooters Party this year, apart from the Lindsay by-election. I cannot recall what result they got there, but I do not think they achieved that much. The Shooters Party actually brought workers and campaigners in from all over New South Wales. This was the big test for Mr Tingle's party, and it achieved nothing—6.9 per cent of the vote.

AAFI brought a candidate up from Sydney, put a bit of money into a campaign, ran a fairly high profile campaign in the last month leading up to the poll last Saturday and achieved 6.2 per cent of the vote. Of course, the Greens, like the Democrats, in these by-elections have collapsed. They achieved only 5.2 per cent of the vote.

I just wanted to highlight to the House the lack of faith that the Labor Party have in their support and their branches in regional New South Wales where they are not prepared to stand a candidate, they are not prepared to put any money into a campaign and they certainly did not do it in the by-election in the state seat of Port Macquarie.

More than that, after achieving 38 per cent of the vote in the general election in March 1995, it seems that there was probably only 21 per cent of the vote available for them to win in this by-election if they had bothered to stand a candidate, if Bob Carr had not wimped out and had been prepared to stand a candidate and represent the policies that he has been implementing in New South Wales since being elected in March 1995.

But he was not prepared to do that. He was not prepared to test his hand. He was not prepared to cop a message from people in regional New South Wales, who are sick to death of the policies of the Carr Labor government. Along with other members of this place, particularly from our side of this House, I congratulate Robert Oakeshott on his win last Saturday.