Tony Abbott on One Nation

House of Representatives - Adjournment Debate

Mr ABBOTT (Warringah--Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs) (7.05 p.m.)--As the member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) well knows, politics sometimes makes for odd bedfellows, and even the best of us get saddled with our own personal Judas. I do not judge the Labor Party by Mal Colston. Years ago it would have been quite improper to judge the Nationalist Party by T.J. Leahy, and the member for Werriwa should not judge me by David Oldfield.

Today the member for Oxley (Ms Hanson) released her party's immigration policy. The first question that she faced at the subsequent press conference was the use of a tax haven by One Nation Ltd's part-owner and national director, David Ettridge. She refused to take any questions on this subject, but these are the questions which One Nation's supporters across Australian want her to answer. How can the party which claims to be against tax avoidance and which claims to be against get-rich-quick scams by white shoe brigade spivs have as its national director someone who does not pay his tax and uses tax havens?

It was also noteworthy in today's press conference that David Oldfield chose to keep a low profile. The puppet master might have withdrawn behind the curtains, but he is clearly still pulling the strings, as more and more One Nation members are realising. People are getting the message that Pauline Hanson is being used by the two Davids and that David Oldfield is using Pauline Hanson as his personal Trojan horse to enter the Senate.

More and more One Nation members are getting the message. Peter Archer, their former regional director in New South Wales, said that Oldfield is in it for power, Ettridge is in it for money and Hanson is in it for ego. What is happening is that people are understanding that Oldfield, Ettridge and Hanson are engaged in a strange menage a trois. But where is it leading the nation? What type of people are running One Nation? Today we had Mr Ettridge talking to the Australian. The newspaper stated:

Mr Ettridge said membership numbers and details were kept secret from One
Nation members.

"It's nobody's business but ours," he said.

"We don't want branches getting into the data base because it is not
important for them to have it. It is quite important that they shouldn't have
it," he said . . . Mr Ettridge said branch office holders had to sign a "pledge
of loyalty" and an undated letter of resignation, which had been used to get
rid of six members.

I did not receive any money from World Vision. World Vision was contracted
with Global Communications. I am an overseas principal of Global
Communications, which is owned by Mr Ross Boland who is an expatriate living in
Vanuatu.

The big question is: what is going to happen to the $500,000 in taxpayers' money that they are entitled to after the Queensland election? The registered agent of the One Nation party is presumably David Ettridge, and there is nothing at all to stop David Ettridge using this money to travel to Vanuatu, presumably to visit Ross Boland, to collect the cheques which he reckons went to a one-roomed house in a village without any electricity.

This is not a time to mince words. I say in this parliament that Oldfield and Ettridge are chronic and habitual liars, and I again call on the ASC to investigate whether David Ettridge has used the incorporation of a company in Vanuatu as a device to get around Australian bankruptcy law.

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