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Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Page: 5198

Senator MARSHALL (Victoria) (15:23): I think Senator Ryan is reliving his university student days with such a contribution. He should have tried to put some substance into his speech.

Senator Ryan interjecting—

Senator MARSHALL: I did not go to university, Senator Ryan, so I missed that joyous time that many on your side must have revelled in and miss deeply. I ask Senator Ryan not to leave the chamber because I am indebted to him for clarifying on the public record that there were 400 people at the rally. I thought Senator Macdonald had claimed that there were 8,000. Either you or Senator Macdonald is clearly misleading the chamber, and I thought you might stay and clarify whether it was him or you. I see that you are leaving the chamber, because that would be an embarrassing clarification for you to make. I did not go out there so I am not going to take a guess. The Australian is certainly no friend of the Labor Party and it claimed there were 300—but who is counting.

We as a party and as a government have always respected people's rights to protest. But we have nothing to apologise for and certainly the Leader of the House has nothing to apologise for. We were not criticising the people's right to protest—we are very happy with that and we are happy to listen to them. But the organisers of this protest said tens of thousands of people would be descending on Canberra and that a demonstration by those numbers would be a message to the Gillard government to resign. Overwhelming numbers of Australians were going to descend on Canberra and we were going to be forced to resign from govern­ment. Instead of tens of thousands coming, 400 came. Given the claims that the protesters made, instead of having tens of thousands, we got 400. Quite frankly, it was inconsequential in terms of their objectives of overwhelming Canberra and sending us a message to resign. It was never inconse­quential for people to actually come and protest. People have that right and I encourage people to do so. But when you look at the aims, and it was an ideologically motivated protest when you look at the nature of the organiser in the first place, their claim was that they were going to flood Canberra with trucks and tens of thousands of people. Well, that did not eventuate. What did The Australian, no friend of the Labor Party, say? I quote:

It was meant to draw thousands of disenfranchised Australians demanding a fresh election, but yesterday's 'convoy of no confidence' was more fizzle than fury.

I think they have got it right, too. The newspaper article goes on to talk about rally organiser Mick Pattel standing by his views that climate action could be considered a global conspiracy. There we have it. No wonder they could not get tens of thousands of people. I do not think tens of thousands of people actually believe that climate change is some sort of global conspiracy.

But who is this Mr Pattel? I have not done my own research. I do not normally like relying on newspapers, so I put that precondition on it. But, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the organiser, Mr Mick Pattel, is a former Liberal-National party candidate in Queensland. What a surprise that is. This international conspiracy theorist was a candidate for the National-Liberal party in Queensland and he organised apparently this overwhelming group of tens of thousands of people that turned into 400 to descend on Canberra. Quite frankly, that was a flop and a failure; that did not send us any messages at all. All that said was that we can trust that Australians do not believe that climate change is some part of an international conspiracy. They are a wake-up to being used and manipulated by Liberal-National party candidates. They are smarter than that. We give them a lot more credit than that. It is a pity that you on that side do not.