“We want our country back,” Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has told Tony Abbott, during a speech to the Senate in which he invited the prime minister to visit Western Australia during the Senate election campaign.
Ludlam, first elected to the Senate in 2007, is facing a difficult re-election campaign for the April 5 re-run of last year’s Senate election in Western Australia.
Ludlam advised Abbott “to leave your excruciatingly boring three-word slogans at home”. He listed a series of issues – Manus Island, the ABC, homophobia, working conditions, the shark cull and the NBN – to warn Abbott not to take the votes of Western Australians for granted.