Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an outstanding contribution from the member for Sturt. I'm going to change what I was going to say because what he's highlighted is this almost comical situation we find ourselves in. It's like an episode of Seinfeld: this was a policy about nothing. It was a lot of sound and fury, with some things flashing up on the screen, and absolutely nothing happened until the intervention of the Greens. We saw this magnificent kabuki theatre—the Prime Minister snarling at the member for Griffith as he walked out, all the articles and all the hubris and the animosity that's been thrown about—but of course any quarrel can be solved if enough money is thrown at it. It was $3 billion. That's how much it cost the taxpayer to bring this lovers' tiff to an end. But what a great episode of kabuki theatre it was.

I've got to give it to the Greens here. This is the greatest political play, and I think it's been undersold. I want to go through just how great this political play by the Greens has been. The issue of housing supply in Australia is due to the deployment of Greens policies at a local government level: their continual refusal to allow developments for housing—for kids, like those sitting up in the gallery here, to grow up and buy one day—their absolute nimbyism and their rejection of anything. This was caught magnificently in the Courier Mail recently. In just the three electorates of our new Greens members in Brisbane, they have fought against the development of—you won't believe this, Member for Deakin—1,900 apartments.

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