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

I stand to speak basically because I see Senator Xenophon as a very decent person and I think it is absolutely essential now that this situation be seen as nothing to do with Senator Xenophon; it is to do with the arrogance and complete lack of consultation on the part of the Labor Party. That is the reason we are here. To compare this package to fiscal packages in countries such as the United States, where there was extensive consultation between the Senate and the President as they progressed that package, is a complete insult.

Quite obviously, this package will now fail. The sooner we get started on one where there is proper and open consultation between all parties to come up with something constructive that we can deliver back to our nation, the better. You dare to come in here and start pointing the finger at Senator Xenophon or Senator Fielding, or anybody else for that matter, when it is something that you have brought down on yourself because of the pathetic and ridiculous way that you have presented this package—the complete lack of detail, the gun-to-our-heads process and duress that you have placed on this chamber. You are now reaping what you sowed in how you went about trying to deliver government. This was a complete fiasco, but the fiasco rests on your heads and your heads alone—nobody else’s.

What is happening today is the only reasonable outcome for something that has been cobbled together in an eclectic group of nefarious clauses in some divine hope that without proper analysis it can deliver Australia into anything but a debt position that is quickly becoming unfathomable. What is happening today is the only outcome that can be expected from such a ridiculous and insulting process as the one the Labor Party have delivered during the whole debate on this so-called fiscal stimulus package.