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

Yes, they will look good in Geneva, they will look smarmy in Kyoto, but they will look disastrous if you have a job in Gladstone, in Mount Isa, in Rockhampton, in Mackay, in Cairns, in Townsville, in Cloncurry or in Toowoomba. All these places are to become doormats to the Labor Party because apparently their gesture is worth more than Queensland jobs, more than the jobs of Australian working families.

How dare they come in here and say they support working families when they are the only party in the Western world coming up with a policy that will put people out of work for a token gesture. Some 50,000 abattoir workers, meat workers, could lose their jobs because of this gesture and the jobs of about 18,000 mining workers in Queensland are under threat, because of a gesture. They are willing to put these people down. They do not care about them any more. They have found themselves on the Treasury benches and now they can put these people aside for a gesture. The ETS, the employment termination scheme, is brought to you by the Australian Labor Party—who consider you to be no more than a doormat—for the Kyoto protocol and the whole environmental movement, even though it is not actually going to change the environment, even though it is not going to make one iota of difference to the climate. They are willing to put these people out of work, out on the street, and have the locks changed after their houses are repossessed because they no longer have jobs—because of the Labor Party. (Time expired)