Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It will be freezing. If Labor Party taxes were going to cool things, this place would be a very frigid chamber indeed. But apparently that is how they are going to cool it this time: it is a new tax. And we have to believe this, because they are very believable people. They are just up the Parramatta Road from Baulkham Hills, and they have a deal for you: they are going to change the temperature of the globe by a new tax.

One might suggest, however crude it is, that they are trying to bring this on because they are trying to dummy up the books. One could suggest that they might be trying to bring this tax in to dummy up the books so that every time you turn on a light you pay the tax to pay for the Labor Party’s paucity of capacity in balancing the nation’s books. That is why you are going to do it. It is not going to cool the globe; it is just because they are desperately in need of a new flow of funds to dummy up their dodgy books. This is the reality we live in.

So we will be engaging with you fervently on making sure that this nation is not going to have this swiftie pulled on it again by the Labor Party. If we have to once more melt down the phones in this building in letting them know which people are going to vote for this ridiculous tax then we will do it. We will go back into action to try and protect Australia from this deceit. I want one person from the Labor Party to stand up and tell me, or tell Australia, how much they intend the temperature of the globe to cool by reason of their new tax. Just tell me that. Is it a degree? Is it part of a degree? Is it 10 degrees? How much is the world going to cool because of the Labor Party’s new tax? This is the premise of the argument: that this is the problem that they are about to solve.

We are going to look at dodgy promises—the fine print about promises that will never be delivered. We are going to look at the absolute stuff-up that the books are in at the moment, which will reflect exactly where our nation is. If you want to know where our nation is, you should go to the Australian Office of Financial Management website, look up ‘Australian government securities outstanding’ and rate them yourself every week. Every week, have a look at how much bigger our debt gets and then ask yourself how you—because it is the Australian people—are going to pay this money back. The way they are going to try and do it is by banging new taxes on you.

We will take the Labor government directly back to where we were prior to this election, with their lack of detail on their finances, their lack of delivery on their promises and the lack of believability in the omens that they put forward. Once more we will be reminding the Australian people that these are the ones who came up with a plan where they were not trying to cool the planet. They were just going to cool your houses, and in the process they did not cool them; they burnt down 190 of them. These are the people who decided that apparently a new school hall at three times the price at the back of your local state school, whether you wanted it or not, was somehow going to bring the world economy back into gear. These are the people who believed that the purchase of a flat screen from South Korea was somehow going to stimulate the Australian economy. These are the people who told you that the reason Australia avoided recession was not the iron ore exports from Western Australia, the coal exports from Queensland or the wheat exports from New South Wales. No, it was the $900 cheques. That is what did it. That is what saved the world. Remember, they said at the start, ‘Go hard, go household, go early.’ They left a couple of things off there. They went hard, they certainly went household, they went early and then they went off their heads and now they are going broke.