Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

My attentions were directed to the member for Throsby because he should hang his head in shame as a pathetic individual. He has turned his back on the workers in his electorate. He has turned his back on the unions that supported him. He should have the courage to walk down that corridor with the blue carpet up to the Prime Minister's office, knock on her door and say, 'Wake up to the concerns and anxieties of the people in my electorate.' But he will not do that because as we know, because Dougie Cameron told us, they have all gone down that path of having that special operation to become lobotomised zombies on the government benches. Why would the Prime Minister be going down this path? For one simple reason: she has sold her soul. She has fought all her political life to get to this point and she wants to hold on to it whatever the price. If the price is Australian manufacturing, so be it. If the price was getting rid of Kevin Rudd, the man she promised to support, last year, so be it. If she is prepared to sacrifice the base of Labor Party support, those trade union workers who are members of unions right across Australia and who form the backbone of our manufacturing sector, what moral bankruptcy reigns in the Labor Party of today. As Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union said: '... it won't cost jobs. It will cost lives if there is not an appropriate approach by the government.' Somehow the government has tried to demonise those in the manufacturing sector, calling them polluters and the like. What they have not actually admitted is that we cannot have a modern economy without steel, without aluminium, without cement. Imposing a carbon tax will do only one thing: it will send those jobs offshore. It will send those businesses offshore to countries like China, which will create more emissions to make the things that we used to make. Those arguments seem to fall on deaf ears because political desperation has infected this government to such a point that nothing else matters. They are deaf to any reason, to any logic, to any compassion, to any vision for a country that makes things. Remember, there was a time when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister and he said he did not want to be Prime Minister of a nation that did not make things. The only thing that is being made by this government is an absolute mess, an absolute disaster without vision.

I for one, standing on this side of the House, do not want my country to be one that has relegated manufacturing to the dust bin. We have other former trade unionists on the other side who loved to get on TV every morning when a couple of unfortunate miners were stuck down a mine. They were salivating to get on TV. The member for Maribyrnong was thinking: 'This is great. I can get my face on TV. I hope those miners stay down that hole for a bit longer so I can get my bit of publicity.' In his maiden speech, which he quoted on his own website, he talked about lessons:

… the lessons of my family, the lessons of my education, the lessons of business, the lessons of my union days. All these lessons can be distilled into one phrase: never give up.

Well, this fraud has given up on those union members who put him there, as have so many of his colleagues sitting on the front bench. Why do they not have the courage of Labor members past to understand their basic responsibility to speak on behalf of those who do not have the political or economic power to get up and defend their jobs and defend manufacturing? It was that great Labor Party hero Kim Beazley Sr who said that when he was a member of the Labor Party it was 'full of the cream of the working class; now it contains the dregs of the middle class'. I am afraid to say that is too kind a description to explain the quality of the current members on the other side.

Worst of all, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is ignoring his constituents. One particular business, just a few doors down from his electorate office, was reported as saying: 'It's just the wrong way to go. It's unnecessary, it's unfair and it will hurt businesses like ours.' Did the minister care? Of course not, because he has his eye on the prize as well. The only question we need to ask is: how long will he keep the rest of the backbench suffering before he does the inevitable and taps the Prime Minister on the shoulder?

She is determined to proceed with a carbon tax in the mistaken belief that it will show her as a tough woman, a decisive woman, a woman who achieved something that Kevin Rudd did not achieve. She has certainly done that. She has had a record fall in the polls and, as long as she persists with this tax that destroys jobs and manufacturing, she will continue to break records in those polls. I am sure that will cause great concern to the members on the other side. Whether the fear of losing their seats will actually give them some encouragement to speak out remains to be seen, but I am afraid the quality on the other side does government in this country no justice.

When every single group involved in manufacturing, from one end of the country to the other, is telling the government, 'Do not kill our business; do not kill our industry; do not put food manufacturing at risk; do not risk our food security' what is the government saying? 'Oh, they are just scaremongering.' Ignoring the facts and ignoring rational debate, the government are bunkering down into a position where they have nowhere to go. The only place to go is to an election, but we know the government will not do that in the mistaken belief that if they can somehow tough it out and see it through they will survive.

I call on members of the other side: the member for Wakefield, the member for Port Adelaide, the member for Isaacs, who boasts that there is more manufacturing in his electorate than in the rest of Melbourne, the member for Bruce, the member for Gellibrand, the member for Bendigo, the members for Corangamite and Corio. Where are you when the people in your electorates are demanding a voice in this House? Their voice is loud. It is being heard by many on this side. It is being heard by industry. But you are neglecting them. That is the typical arrogance of the Labor Party aristocracy. They come here on the work and the sweat of workers to get their positions of power and then totally and utterly ignore them and the sectors in which they work. (Time expired)

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