Maintaining the pressure,Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s next question was on the same topic.
“I invite[Mr Morrison] to directly condemn the member for Dawson for the very specific comments that he has made,saying that the part of the solution is,to quote him,‘I don’t say this lightly – civil disobedience’,” he said.
Mr Morrison returned to the dispatch box and evoked Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus,who made similar comments in 2017.
“I restate exactly what I have said in my answer to the previous question. And,Mr Speaker,I note this though,this is a quote from Sally McManus ...” he said,before being drowned out by opposition voices.
That prompted a dressing down from newly minted Speaker Andrew Wallace.
“It’s not appropriate 12 seconds in or 15 seconds in to a question to make a quote of Sally McManus. I ask the Prime Minister to respond to the question directly,please,” he said,prompting another attempt by Mr Morrison to enter Ms McManus’s comment into the Hansard again.
But he was thwarted and the chamber appeared to have moved on.
Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese go head-to-head in Question Time.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Then another Queensland MP,Bob Katter,came to the Prime Minister’s rescue.
“Prime Minister,Sally McManus has been a great union leader in this country. Would you quote her in this house,please?”
Cue applause from the government benches.
“I thank the member for Kennedy for his question,” a beaming Mr Morrison said.
“This is what the leader of the trade union movement said:‘I believe in the rule of law when the law is fair and the law is right. But when it’s unjust,I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it.’
“We should respect the rule of law. We should always respect the rule of law. We shouldn’t encourage people to break the law.”
Ms McManus made that comment in 2017,upon her election as ACTU secretary,while defending the CFMEU,which was facing 118 separate legal proceedings at the time,including many regarding illegal strikes.
“It might be[illegal] according to our current laws and the current laws are wrong. It shouldn’t be so hard for workers in our country to take industrial action,” she told the ABC’s7.30program on March 15 of that year,before making the now-infamous comments.
Mr Christensen will not contest Dawson at the next election,but former Queensland Labor heavyweight John Mickel said that did not mean his seat would become winnable for Mr Albanese.
“Dawson is a seat Labor only wins when Labor is doing extraordinarily well in Queensland,” said Mr Mickel,a former speaker in the State Parliament and now an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology.
“There’s been nothing that I’ve seen the polling indicate that seat is in play,nothing at all.”