Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

It must be appalling to be Senator Brown; he has such a gloomy view of the world. Everything is awful. Everything is terrible. Through you, Mr President: I do not know how you cope with that, Senator Brown. How you get up every morning, I do not know, to face this gloomy, dreadful world that you keep coming in here to tell us all about. I just do not know how you do it.

The reality is that Australia was honoured to be asked to host APEC this year. We have hosted an extraordinarily successful APEC. Yes, it had to be held in Sydney. There was a view that it might be nice if it could be held in Canberra, and there was some logic to that, but that was deemed not possible because there was simply not the commercial accommodation available for it to be held in Canberra. Therefore, it was decided, in cooperation with the—