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

I shall. Continuing with the story, there are 60-odd jobs there. Over the years there had been a build-up of sawdust and off-cuts. There was enough material there to fire a generator for six or 12 months. The government decided it would close the mill down. Part of that closure was the instruction, ‘You bury all these off-cuts and sawdust.’ The build-up was the size of a football field. Part of the compensation, if compensation were to be paid, required the sawdust to be buried. It took weeks to bury it. The point I want to make is that that renewable energy had enough power to fire a generator for six months. That was refused—the government would not allow it to happen—so they had to bury it. The generator wanted it. The operator wanted to sell it to the generator, or even give it to him, but no, the government said to bury it. So, what did the generator use? Black coal. There was a renewable source that could have been used and could have replaced black coal—but no. This is how stupid this thing gets. It was not allowed to be used: wood offcuts had to be buried and coal had to be used in a generator. That is why we are not supporting these amendments.

You can just go down the road to Visy. They have an operation where they power their generators with sawdust and wood offcuts. We would put out another couple of hundred blue-collar worker jobs. That does not seem to worry the Greens. We understand that. The environment is their No. 1 priority. But I would have thought it would worry the Labor Party. If we pass these amendments, we are going to knock off more blue-collar worker jobs. I do not know how we are going to power these generators. I suppose we will close them down. We will close down the Visy generators, the generators that use sawmill offcuts. We will close them down. That will probably affect the viability of the whole operation. For goodness sake, when is the Labor Party going to show a bit of backbone and stand up for the people? The people are out there. They are not earning big money, but they are paying their union fees and they are making a huge sacrifice to do it. When are you going to stand up for them? Why are you trying to take their jobs off them?

Senator Milne, I think I have explained it to you. Because you read about these sorts of operations, I believe you would have seen that in the Australian. There are 60 jobs down the tube. Do you know what they sold those 55 acres for? They sold them for $270,000. There were 18 homes, two men’s quarters, a dining room and a kitchen. It all went for $270,000. With that went 60 jobs. People had been out there happily working. They received a home for $20 or $30 a week and free electricity. They were happy there. But they lost their jobs. You want us to continue that. I am sorry, Senator Milne; I cannot accept your amendments.

I ask Senator Wong to address the issues that I raised regarding Catholic Health and tell us what she has done to talk to them. They have talked to you, your department or your office. Tell me how you have said to them: ‘Don’t worry about this $10.8 million. There is a way to get this money.’ If you would address that, I would be very grateful.