Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

If the member for Hughes wants to learn something, he will find it a lot easier to learn something with his mouth closed. What I hope to do is paint the problems with this legislation.

I am not surprised that there have not been too many National Party speakers on this bill, because they would be ashamed to do it. We all remember November 2013, a few months after the election, where the National Party went to the wall. They went to the wall, in the name of the national interest, to prevent a company—a US backed company by the name of Archer Daniels Midland—from purchasing a controlling interest in GrainCorp. Their concern back then was to ensure that the national interest was protected. They did not want to see a foreign company come in and have a controlling interest in GrainCorp.

Where are those National Party members today? They managed to bust the former Treasurer's arm and roll him, because they thought it was not in the national interest to have a US backed multinational company running GrainCorp, a critical piece of infrastructure loading grain onto ships. But somehow it is in the national interest to have every single Australian worker—

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

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