A NSW Senator has compared South Australia to a stinky fat man who enjoys artificially flavoured cheesy snacks.

In a sign other states are envious of the state for securing promises on shipbuilding and water, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm said we should be stripped of some of our GST revenue and have our “bleatings” ignored.

media_camera We tried to find the best photo we could of Senator David Leyonhjelm. Picture: Gary Ramage

“If the South Australia Government was a person, it would be an obese 40-year-old man with awful body odour who lives with his mother, refuses to work, and plays Xbox all day,” Senator Leyonhjelm told Parliament on Wednesday.

“He pauses only to demand more Cheezels and iced coffee, or to complain when the lights go out.”

The state’s unemployment woes mean we’re at risk of “becoming one big, barren, candlelit retirement village”, he said, then outlined the concerns of one constituent who was hit by flooding that was exacerbated by environmental water releases in the Murray Darling Basin.

“And yet the primary concern of some SA politicians appears to be that people visiting holiday houses in Goolwa might miss out on watching gigalitres of freshwater flow into the ocean every day,” he said.

media_camera Then we found this one. Picture: Gary Ramage

“We should respond less to all of their bleatings — their bleatings for money, for water, for power, and for anything else, until such time as they can demonstrate they can behave like responsible adults in the federation.”

South Australians could point out that Senator Leyonhjelm was born on April 1 in a town called Nhill and hasn’t amounted to much, but that would be churlish.

Senator Nick Xenophon wasn’t so restrained on Facebook today.

“It’s no wonder people hate politicians when they say stuff like that,” Senator Xenophon said.

“People in the eastern states think we are a convenient punching bag or doormat but we’re not going to cop it.

“At one level it’s laughable (what Senator Leyonhjelm said) but it actually shows the contempt with which people in the east hold SA.”