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

What an absolutely hypocritical statement. We have the Greens complaining about queue jumping. I never thought that would come up in the Senate, but today the Greens are the biggest advocates to make sure people are not queue jumpers. What do they say is more important than the equality of people in trying to get a tertiary education? Well, they have given us three issues: whaling, the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill and euthanasia. They are basically saying: ‘We’re happy for you to get married but we’re not happy for you to go to university. We’re happy for you to have a statement on whales but we’re not happy for you to go to university. We’re happy for you to be put to sleep but we’re not happy for you to be put into a university.’ What an absolute bag of hypocrisy the Greens are today.

And then we have this whole process, this Kafkaesque preamble given by Senator Evans, as a reason why we cannot be fair and decent to regional Australians. We are absconding from our responsibility to deliver equality and to deliver their capacity to get a tertiary education. One of the greatest inhibitors to a person’s advancement is their lack of getting an education, and people in regional Australia have a right to a tertiary education. This is not something for the urbane; it is something for everybody, but now we are getting the true reflection of the urbane, the true collective of the urbane as they say to people in regional Australia, ‘Thou shalt not go to university, thou shalt not advance your life, though shalt stay where you are; you will not get the opportunities that other sections of Australia get.’

And why do we have to do this now? It is because we need this dealt with before the end of the year. We need to give a signal that we support equality and believe in the rights of people in regional areas to be educated and to attain their tertiary desires in a tertiary institution in a metropolitan institution. But this process has been inhibited by the actions of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens—the complete and utter hypocrisy of the Australian Greens. I hope it does not happen but we will be testing whether other independents will be absconding. I state that we must stand up for people in regional Australia.

There is also hypocrisy about us using someone else’s time. This time is allocated to the opposition and is being used in a most effective way. This is our time and we are using it to support our people. You had the hide to be elected on the premise that you would look after regional Australia. There is nothing that you have done to look after regional Australia. You have a litany of excuses. You have made yourselves devoid of any responsibility for regional Australia. You stand there smugly and talk about precedents and this and that and then coalesce with your friends in the Greens as the urbane connection decides to cut regional Australians out of their rights to a tertiary education. You will be held accountable for this—everybody who votes against this will be held accountable for this. You know fairly well that the reality of this is that people will not get the chance to go to university. There are people who will now make the decision that they are unable to go to university—not those who have the money; those who do not have the money, those who are without, those who are at the bottom is of the pile, the people you are supposed to be looking after but have decided not to. You have deserted them so that we can talk about whaling and the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill. We know where your priorities lie, we know what is important to you and we know what is important to the Labor Party. Your priorities lie with the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill, with euthanasia and with whaling. Do not worry about tertiary education. ‘No, we won’t worry about that. We’ll just park that.’

How long do we have to wait—until next year? How do we actually deal with this? We have to deal with this before the end of the year. We have literally days in which we have to deal with this. Do you think for one moment that the whole world does not know that people such as Senator Nash, Senator Williams, Christopher Pyne and Senator Mason have been fighting for this and driving this agenda? This is no surprise—how completely disingenuous of you to say that this is some incredible surprise. This is something that has been part of the debate for a long period of time. People on this side have tried to fight for equality and fairness but you have deserted them. You have deserted them for what?