Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have a crisis on our hands. The Greens are right; they are coming at it from a different angle from Senator Joyce, Senator Heffernan and me, but we all arrive at the same point—that it is going to be a disaster. You can prevent that disaster, if you have any feeling for rural and regional Australia. You have heard the debate. You have gone up there and promised various things to the people and then reneged on them when you got into government—you know that. This inquiry will have to be a big inquiry. It will be up to us to make sure this proposition is thoroughly investigated, along with MISs.

I am very sympathetic to the amendment but it will not achieve anything, Senator Brown, because the bill is on foot. It is law now. The only way for your amendment to work would be to carry the Liberal and the Labor parties in a vote—which we are not going to do; we have not got the numbers—and take it over there and get the vote taken in the other place. Practically, that is not going to happen. The next practical thing, and the best thing, we can do is—