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

I am sorry, Mr Deputy President, but I can see the disaster coming and I get excited about it. I can see the loss of jobs that these guys are going to put on the decent blue-collar workers who have always supported them. They have ratted on them. They have walked away from them. It would not be so bad if everyone else was going to do it. But President Obama has said, ‘We’ll do it when everyone else does it.’ Mrs Clinton has said, ‘We’ll do it too, but everyone’s got to follow.’ Their envoy Senator Kerry said, ‘We can’t do this unless everyone else is doing it.’ Why are you leading Australian industry like lambs to the slaughter? That is what is happening to this industry: it is being treated like lambs to the slaughter. No-one else is going to do it—they have said they are not going to do it. China have said they are not going to do it. India have said they are not going to do it. America have said they are not going to do it. Who has said they are going to do it? And, when they have said they are going to do it, they are going to do it in 2027. We are going to start next year, in 2010. Why are you doing this? Don’t you care for Australia? Are you going to just let them sink?

Every one of you over there—apart from Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong—please help us; please let the Senate defeat this bill. Please get us off the hook by letting the Senate defeat this bill. You can go to your green voters, who you love—you have deserted your blue-collar workers—and say, ‘Oh, we tried; those rats in the Senate blocked us.’ And then you can go to the blue-collar workers and say, ‘Yeah, we knew it was going to happen; we were always on your side.’ The hypocrisy of the Labor Party on this ETS is unbelievable; it has never been seen before. And that is not Ron Boswell saying that; it is all the economists in Australia. (Time expired)