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

I will retract. Senator Cameron is the good senator for working families who insists on an emissions trading scheme that is going to put those working families out of a job. ETS stands for ‘employment termination scheme’. It started terminating their jobs today. It started terminating jobs in Rockhampton. So much for their economic management. The ETS is the ‘extra tax system’. Every family, no matter where they are, is going to have a close relationship with our good Prime Minister. Every power point in the house will be connected to a tax connected to the Labor Party. It will be a new tax. Every shopping trolley will have a new tax in it. We will have the Prime Minister coming to you via your toaster, coming to you via your television set and coming to you via every electrical appliance in the house. If you want to get away from him, you can go and do some shopping, but he will be on every food item. If you just want to get out of the joint and go on holidays, do not worry, as his new tax will be on aviation fuel so he will be on the plane with you. This man is everywhere. He is everywhere but nowhere.

The Australian people should realise the opportunity costs. They are going to spend $3.9 billion on ceiling insulation. We could have built the inland rail. We could have built it all the way from Gladstone down to Melbourne. We could have built a corridor of commerce. It would have removed trucks from the road. It would have reduced carbon emissions, if that was what you wanted. It would have fixed interport connectivity. It would have actually done something. It would have delivered an asset to the nation—an asset which, at a future time, we might have been able to sell to recoup some of our debt. But, no, they did not. They had to spend it on ceiling insulation. They have spent $890 million on boom gates, $40.7 million on school halls and $12.7 million in one-off payments. That encapsulates it. It is so easy to spend and it is so hard to get it back. You do not have a clue. (Time expired)