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

Thank you, Mr Chairman. Senator Evans did come down here and he was talking to Senator Brown—it is on film. I am talking about what is there on the record for everybody to see. We know how these things work between the Labor Party and the Greens, but basically the Greens have left all the running to Senator Xenophon. For Senator Xenophon, even though I do not agree with his position, it was a political masterstroke. He has left them all in his wake. He has managed to get more than Minister Wong got from her own cabinet. It is quite incredible and I think that if there is a political award he should get it—and good luck to Senator Xenophon. He is extremely astute and adroit, far more adroit than the Greens and far more adroit than Labor’s own minister.

If there is a benefit to the Murray-Darling people because of it, good luck to them, but this has really and clearly displayed the ability for sneakiness and the arrogance of the Labor Party in this whole process. This whole process is now going to lumber Australia with a debt that we have not seen before. In my time in banking there was always one clear thing that you had to explain to get money. It was called an exit strategy. It was the exit strategy of how you would pay the money back. Unless you could display an exit strategy you did not get the money. Well, there is no exit strategy to this. I do not know what asset they had in mind that they were going to sell to try to pay back this money.