Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Have a look at Queensland. Goodness me! I am sure the Premier’s husband is a very competent and well-qualified person, but putting him in charge of a major state government public service organisation was going a bit beyond the pale, even for the likes of Senator Cameron and others in the Labor movement.

I do not want to be alarmist and I do not want to see conspiracies that are not there, but you do have to wonder why it is that the Labor governments are getting their sticky claws into every aspect of Australian business, government, unions and way of life. This bill leaves us all wondering why it is there. What is the reason for it? Mr Rudd suggested that where loans had been provided in the commercial property sector there would be an exodus of foreign lenders. So, on the spur of the moment, he had this great idea for the government to become involved to protect against that. But the Reserve Bank refuted the underlying principle with this statement from 6 February 2009:

Over recent months there has been some speculation that many foreign owned banks will withdraw from the Australian market and that this will create a significant funding shortfall for businesses. While there is a risk that some foreign lenders will scale back their Australian operations, particularly if offshore financial markets deteriorate further, at this stage there is little sign of this, with most of the large foreign-owned banks planning to maintain their lending activities …

So why bother with this? I know why the foreign banks would be worried: because of the stupid emissions trading scheme that this government wants to introduce, but I will talk about that when I next get the opportunity.

Debate interrupted.