Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we know, there will be Australian workers working in the field with overseas workers and the overseas workers will be paying 10 per cent tax. This is a ridiculous proposition that has been put forward by Jacqui Lambie and is supported by the Australian Labor Party, the party that is supposed to support and look after Australian workers. It is an absolutely ludicrous situation. Worse than anything else, the Labor Party understands that this is a time-critical issue. As I said yesterday, what you should always do in opposition is be very careful about doing no harm. When you are in opposition and want to attack the policies of the government that is fine, but, whatever you are attacking, make sure you do no harm to the industry. The way the Labor Party is going at this one is that they are just going to go ballistic and attack whoever, and they do not care whether any damage is done to the industry itself, providing they can have a go at the government.

I also want to touch on the member for Bendigo. During the signing of the last free trade agreement, the member for Bendigo spent most of the negotiating period attacking the free trade agreement as some horrendous attack on Australian workers, making out this free trade agreement was going to be the worst deal for Australia you could ever have signed. Then, once it was signed, without anything different being done, the member for Bendigo was on the front page of the Bendigo Advertiser saying what an amazing deal this free trade agreement was going to be for the wine growers— (Time expired)

See this speech in context