Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

You can yell at me all you like, but it's the truth, and it's particularly the truth in regional Australia. It comes down to local government planning. It comes down to the sheer ineptitude of state governments that want to close down the timber industry, and then it comes down to the federal Labor government, which doesn't want to build anything, unless it's with the Greens. Then they make this faux policy that they claim is going to build tens of thousands of houses. Good luck with that! It's just not going to work.

If you look at the housing construction companies that have gone to the wall, some are not small companies.

Honourable members interje cting—

You shouldn't laugh at this, because this is very, very serious, because it's people in jobs. It's tradies. It's those people who you claim to be supporting through fee-free TAFE. I said the other day that sparkies and plasterers and all of those people who go to TAFE and earn that certificate should be admired and applauded every bit as much as anybody who holds a tertiary degree from university. They should, and yet they are being put up against the proverbial brick wall by those opposite with their policies, with their embarrassing coercion by the Greens, who pretended for months they were going to pull the trigger for the double dissolution. Now what have we got? We've got these amendments which the coalition will not and cannot support. You all ought to go and take a good long, hard look at yourselves, particularly the minister.

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