Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

But he never mentioned that a big consideration of his budget in the future was that there would be no revenue from the sale of Telstra. In fact, he explicitly avoided the whole mention of Telstra.

It is amazing how quickly things change around here. It was only a matter of months ago that we heard the tirades at the door when we stood here and said that Mr Beazley had intended to sell Telstra right from the start. It did not take very long before he became fair dinkum, as he likes to say, and was truthful with the Australian people and announced implicitly to them in his speech tonight that he is going to sell Telstra. That is something we should get on the record straightaway and, because he is talking about his contract with middle Australia, he has to be completely upfront with them.

All the way through his speech tonight he gave us a whole heap of ‘imagine’ statements. He had more imagining than John Lennon; there were ‘imagine’ statements through the whole lot of it. But not once did we get a costing; not once did he say that he was going to balance the books. That leads us back to the old conundrum of where a Labor government will take us: a Labor government will take us into fiscal irresponsibility, higher interest rates and burgeoning government debt. Very importantly, Mr Beazley also never mentioned his position on superannuation. We do not know whether or not he agrees with the government’s position on superannuation. He ridiculed the tax cuts as $10 worth of poker machine fun or in like terms, but he never said what he intends to do.

In the National Party, we have a strong interest in biorenewable fuels. Mr Beazley also made a statement on that. He is a strong advocate for biorenewable fuels, which leaves a bit of concern about the former position of Bob McMullan, who did his best to kick the life out of the ethanol industry and also about the position of one of the former leaders, Simon Crean. He was another one who, unfortunately for the ethanol industry, managed to kick it to pieces. We would be interested to hear from Mr Beazley what his intentions are in that context, rather than just a generic statement that he is interested in the biorenewable fuel industry. The Labor leader of Queensland says that his own federal colleagues are off the game on this one and that they are dragging the chain. Mr Beazley, apart from a generic statement, has done the same.

It is very important before I go home tonight after listening to that speech that I mention the thing that sticks in my mind and which will stick in everybody’s mind: Mr Beazley is going to sell Telstra, and always was. What we heard over the last six months was a charade and the opposition were completely insincere in the arguments they proffered to us. They were never once honest with us.