George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

that this House recognises that:

(1) the Australian Labor Party has abandoned workers in Queensland, to chase Green votes in Victoria;

(2) Opposition Leader Bill Shorten:

(a) tells workers in Queensland he is pro coal, and in Victoria that he is against it; and

(b) promised green activist Geoff Cousins that he would tear up the approvals for the Adani Carmichael mine;

(3) the opening up of the Galilee Basin has the potential to create over 16,000 jobs in Queensland;

(4) the Australian Labor Party is gambling with the integrity of Australia and has created a sovereign risk; and

(5) Australia should utilise its natural resources and encourage investment in our mining sector to create much needed jobs for regional areas.

Not since Benedict Arnold has there been a betrayal as blatant and cutting as Labor's abandonment of the working man and woman. Benedict Arnold became the shining American symbol of treason after he switched sides and led the British into battle against the very soldiers he had previously commanded—but the British struggled to trust him. Just as traitorous is a Labor Party that has stopped fighting for workers and has gone to join the job-destroying Green socialists. But even the far, far left struggles to trust Labor's shifty leader. The workers in this country are badly in need of support, as they are being denied great opportunities to put bread on the table, to get ahead and to give their families a future.

The Carmichael coal project, more than 300 kilometres and a mountain range away from the coastline, and even further away from the Great Barrier Reef, is waiting to create 10,000 jobs. The proponents already employ 800 people. The project will contribute billions of dollars in royalties to the Queensland government. As expected, the Carmichael coalmine enjoys widespread support across North Queensland and Central Queensland from industry groups, local mayors—including Labor-leading mayors—and mums and dads who want to earn a living in communities that will be directly affected by that project. North Queenslanders who don't support the project are principally the extreme Green groups and Labor MPs.

Actual members of the Labor Party support the Carmichael coal project because their livelihoods depend on mining and industry as well. But when those rank and file Labor members send their MPs to Canberra or to Brisbane, those MPs suddenly lose their voice and their spine. They stop supporting Central and North Queensland because their party leaders, based in capital cities, seize the political opportunity to sell out jobs and miners in North and Central Queensland. The state Labor government has feigned support for as long as it could for this project, has finally come out against it and has promised to reject any federal government financing facility offering the very help that the Queensland government had previously requested.

The final nail in the coffin for miners in mining communities was when their shifty leader dumped any and all support for miners to prevent losing the Batman by-election to the Greens. When he's in Queensland, the shifty Leader of the Opposition tries to create the illusion that he supports the coal industry, which is the opposite of what he says in his home state of Victoria and exactly the opposite of what he told the former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Geoff Cousins, on his Green activist funded tour of North Queensland. While enjoying a $17,000 holiday, including a reef cruise and scenic flights around North Queensland at the expense of the greenies, the Labor leader met with the foundation's former president. In that meeting, the shifty Leader of the Labour Party promised to withdraw his party's support for jobs that would be created by the Carmichael mine. Only when he was about to be outed by the media did that Leader of the Opposition make a shifty update to the members' registers of interests to declare his activist-funded holiday. Whether induced by that free trip or not, The Leader of the Opposition kept his promise to the extreme Greens and pulled all Labor support for jobs when it looked like the Greens might beat their star candidate in the Batman by-election and so now North Queensland is at this crossroads.

After suffering four years of downturn or more in the resources sector, economic prosperity is there and there is more on the horizon. It is within reach. The Adani project is just the first cab off the rank when it comes to opening up the Galilee Basin. Waiting in the wings are several other projects, including the Alpha North coalmine, twice the size of the Carmichael mine. The Galilee Basin stands to create more than 16,000 direct jobs and tens of billions of dollars in royalties. What stands in the way is more than just a traditional collection of radical ratbags opposing any development anywhere at any cost. Miners and families whose livelihoods depend on the mining industry, on coal ports, on other industries that rely on coal now face a wall of extremism from the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace and GetUp!, which are all queuing up to plunge their knife into the workers, like the Roman senators assassinating Julius Caesar. As the Labor Party sink their blade under the blue collar of the honest workers of North Queensland and Central Queensland, they may feel the ultimate betrayal just like Julius Caesar did. But instead of asking, 'Et tu, Brute?', they're asking, 'Even you, shifty Shorten?'

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