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

I have always believed that the definition of cowardly is ‘to run away from a fight’ and I do not intend to do that. I am going to fight this every step of the way.

I do note that there are people within the Labor Party who have differing views but who never have the capacity to stand up to their own party organisation for fear of being expelled. That fear is overwhelming and it is the key thing that differentiates that side from this side. If we have a belief, we have the liberty to express that belief. They do not have a belief; they are told what to believe. So it is the absolute height of hypocrisy to get a claim of cowardliness coming from people who never, ever show any ticker whatsoever to really stand up when it counts. This is especially true given the debacle of Mr Combet coming in and standing over the top of Senator Wong. Senator Wong did not have the capacity to stand up to him and stand her ground.

I am looking forward to the debate. I will partake in it in every way, shape and form. I will do everything I possibly can to protect the Australian people from an absolutely ridiculous scheme that will send the Australian economy into a tailspin in the middle of a recession. How can we possibly have equilibrium based modelling that is premised on the fact of full employment when we are in the middle of a recession, for goodness sake? How on earth did we go forward with a policy premised on the capacity of green jobs to miraculously appear, like manna from heaven in Nimbin, for people in the coalmining areas of Mackay as they venture south like some new form of migrating bird to find Penny Wong’s marvellous green jobs. We cannot even find one. It was an absolute farce the other day in the Senate Economics Legislation Committee when it was put to us that the idea of green jobs is to have a landscape festooned with windmills which will employ the industrious people of Australia. This is the ludicrous type of policy agenda that is coming forward.

There was a book written by Charles Mackay called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. This ETS is going to be like one of those.