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

A new component of the visitor market to North Queensland is criminal tourism. You see, we have unwanted visitors, mostly capital city uni students taking publicly funded holidays to impose their ill-informed ideology on North Queensland as they intend to commit crimes to protest the Carmichael coal project. Galilee blockade strategist Ben Pennings even admitted, 'Things we plan to do are illegal and we plan to get arrested over and over again.' They do so knowing that fundraising will pay any paltry fines. Two weeks ago, five criminal tourists who were engaged with trespassing and interfering with a rail line couldn't be bothered fronting court; instead, they posted in letters to justify their actions. These criminals supported are not only by the Greens—two Greens MPs have actually been fined for protesting—but also by the kinds of people that Labor are climbing into bed with. It was a state Labor government that initially asked the federal government to fund the Adani rail line and shook hands with us on a royalties deal. Now they've blocked federal funding of the same multi-use rail line and want Adani to disappear. When he was within earshot of North Queensland workers, Labor's federal leader once said he supported the mine. Now, with the focus on fighting the Greens in the Melbourne by-election, he has abandoned support for workers, mining and North Queensland. He can't walk away from jobs fast enough. In the Batman battle for peak socialism, the losers are North Queensland workers and future investment in northern Australia.