Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Wakefield is the cheerleader on this because he—unlike those on this side of the chamber—more than anyone in this place, would love to see the demise of Holden, because he could use it for his base political advantage. I have a little bit of advice for the member for Wakefield. His mate the Premier is coming over, I understand. The member for Wakefield should hock him around his colleagues in the Senate so that the Premier can talk to them about the carbon tax. That is what the member for Wakefield should do if he wants to do something serious about this industry and if he wants to send a message to the workers in his electorate—the few of them that still support him.

I must say I was really impressed by the behaviour by the member for Wakefield during question time. I thought, 'Why is he being so well behaved?' Then I thought, 'He would hate to be kicked out when he was due to be speaking on an MPI.' It is so nice to have his company in this place between three o'clock and four o'clock! It is a novel concept, and I am really enjoying it.

Let us get to the subject of the matter. We had a fringe benefits tax, which was an albatross around this industry's neck. Who came up with that genius idea? The people over there. Who came up with the carbon tax? Bear in mind, this was a carbon tax we were never going to have—who came up with that idea? You did—sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker; those on the other side of the chamber did. I would never impute that to you.

Mr Sukkar interjecting—

What did you say about FBT? What they said about FBT is, 'You know, the car industry is going so well we're going to tax the car industry.' Those on the other side of this chamber are like the arsonist who says, 'I'm complaining about the scorched earth.' They are arsonists who complain about scorched earth.

I might be new to this caper, but I will make one observation: credibility is an important thing. Those opposite came into this place yesterday armed with a question: tell us why you are putting at risk 200,000 jobs in the car industry. I thought to myself: that is a question; it has been researched; I had better go away and make sure of my understanding of that. So I spent some time looking for observations in the media about how many jobs are at risk and all these things.

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