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

I indicate that the coalition will be opposing Senator Milne’s amendments. Amongst other things, if the amendments were passed, I am advised they would destroy many, many jobs. Given the particular state of our economy, that is the last thing we want to do. Senator Milne demonstrates why the Greens will continue to be an irrelevancy in the political scene in Australia. Their inconsistency and hypocrisy are seen by most Australians, and indeed voting results in recent elections—the Queensland state election, for example—clearly show that the vote of the Greens political party has fallen quite substantially. They have lost seats at recent federal elections and have not—