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

People listening will acknowledge this. Senator Cameron is supposed to be in here looking after working families. He is supposed to be looking after his rank-and-file union members. What was he going to deliver to those rank-and-file union members? He was going to take those working families out of work. He was going to make the pensioners poorer. He was going to put the farmers off the farm. This is the sort of outcome we will have.

What will we have if this ends up in a double dissolution? It is going to be quite easy for us to define. If you understand the tax, vote for it. If you do not, vote for us. It will be quite clear. We borrowed that line from a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. If you understand this massive new tax, you vote for it. If you want to make working families poorer, you vote for the Labor Party. If you want to put families off the farm, you vote for the Labor Party. If you want to take working families out of work, you vote for the Labor Party. It is quite clear how we can define this line for an election. It is quite clear now for the tens of thousands of Australians who have contacted our office and have said emphatically that they do not want this to go forward.

I listened to talkback radio last night as people pleaded for this chamber not to go forward with this massive new tax. Did the Labor Party hear them? No, they did not. What did the Labor Party do? They became self-indulgent in a fit of pique that they would just pursue this course, that they would demand that the Australian people have to comply with the globetrotting benevolence of our Prime Minister as he sets the most massive carbon footprint in air travel of all time. He is over there now speaking to President Obama. I do not think President Obama is going to turn around the US Senate. Let us be realists about this. There are environmental solutions that we can deal with, but it does not have to be your massive new tax. We as a nation can be smarter than that. We can be smarter than that and deliver a better outcome for our nation than this massive new tax. The National Party and the Liberal Party will be at one in fighting this massive new tax because today there has been a change of direction.

Now we have the capacity to fight the Labor Party, to drag them into this chamber day after day and, piece by piece, pull apart this ridiculous tax and show the Australian people exactly how much the price of food is going to go up by, exactly how much the price of electricity is going to go up by—exactly how much every section of their life is going to be afflicted by it. We will drag the Labor Party in. Now the problem has become the Labor Party’s. It is now on the Labor Party’s lap. They have to convince their working families how they will keep them in work, and the only way they can keep them in work is to walk away from this ridiculous tax. We say to the people of the Hunter Valley: it is the Labor Party who are going to put you out of work. We say to the people of the Hunter Valley: it is Mr Combet who is one of the grand architects to reduce your standard of living. We will say to the people of Dawson: it is the Labor Party who wish to take your standard of living down the tube; they do not believe that you are entitled to the standard of living and the wages you have been getting. The Labor Party do not believe in truck drivers getting paid up to $100,000. No, they are going to take you back to green jobs. They are going to have you building duck ponds, they are going to have you building concrete paths around duck ponds—they are going to have all these fantastic schemes—but they will not give you a decent living. That side of politics will not give you a decent living.

Today is a great day, because today you will see a unified opposition that will take you on, and you know that, because now we have got the capacity to take you on, day after day. From the front benches of this side of the political chamber we will deliver the questions that you will not be able to answer. It will be a great day.

We have this ridiculous proposition that if we pass this bill we are going to be borrowing money from China to send back to China to help develop China. We will be borrowing money from China and from Saudi Arabia to send to African despots. That is not the form of politics that we believe in. We will be able to fight this piece by piece. This is going to be an interesting time. From now on we have the capacity to unify this show. This side of the chamber will be as one. This side of the chamber is, as you speak, working out the questions to ask you about how on earth you are going to be able to pay for this.