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

Even that, Senator Joyce. It is going to have an impact on the people who live in the leafy suburbs too, because someone else is filling the ships that take the export product out. That is done in the mining industry and in the primary industries, and the people who live in the leafy suburbs are carrying the export load.

I suggest that the reason the Labor Party do not want to extend this legislation is that there is, in the blue-collar areas, an awakening. They are saying: ‘Hang on a moment. What’s this going to do for me? How am I going to live? How’s my family going to live? What am I going to do? I’m a miner. It’s what I know. I’m a forester. I am a process worker in a timber mill. I am not skilled in any other way to make a living. How am I going to feed my family? How am I going to look after my kids? What am I going to do?’ That is dawning on these people now. You saw it a couple of days ago in the Riverina, when a parrot took preference over workers. The parrot was put on a higher pedestal than 800 jobs. You cannot win without those blue-collar workers, and you cannot win without the Greens.

Your moderates in your party—the doctors, the wives, the teachers, the academics—cannot get you over the line, and you are playing Russian roulette. And you do not want another three months for the awakening to go further out there, because it is happening now. It is happening on our polling; it must be happening on your polling. People are saying: ‘I want a job. The global crisis is my main concern. I want to feed my kids. I want to look after my house.’ There is an awakening out there. This should be called the Tanner and Plibersek legislation. You know that without Greens preferences you cannot win. You have never tried to fight the Greens back. You have encouraged them and now they are dictating the terms to you. You have taken a tiger by the tail and you cannot get off its back. Their demands will increase and increase and increase. You can never satisfy the demands of the green lobby. They cannot be satisfied. You are on the tiger’s back and you cannot get off.

At the same time we got attacked from the Right. We defended our position and fought back. You never did. That was with Pauline Hanson—you never did. You encouraged the Greens and said: ‘All right. We’ll let them live. We’ll even throw them a few bones.’ They have got to the point now that they are controlling you. You have let them build up to the point where you are being led around by the nose by the Greens.