David Norris (Independent)

I do not want to attack Senator Alex White. He is a decent person and his party has not yet made the jump and done what Tony Blair did. He was happy to dine with Rupert Murdoch in Australia and that is how the Labour Party got into power in England. The newspapers owned by Mr. Murdoch had done in Neil Kinnock, so to speak, who was a fine and decent man, and put in the queasy little equivocator, Mr. Blair, instead. The very fact that Mr. Blair was a nominee of Rupert Murdoch did not appeal to me.

I will leave it at that and I hope that someone in the other House will take up this point. We are creating two-tier citizenship. A person has one set of rights as an ordinary citizen and another set of rights when a person is in public life. I support robust and rigorous examination but am against untruth. That is my view and I do not apologise for it.