Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

We are not allowed to use it, that is right. We can sell it to other people but they do not like us using it. Arkaroola, where Doug and Marg Sprigg have continued the work of their parents in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, is quite a unique part of South Australia. Only two years ago Marathon Resources were found to have breached the requirements of their exploration licence and had allowed waste products to be left there in a manner in which they were not entitled to. They have now had their exploration licence reactivated. I am totally opposed to the exploration of minerals, particularly uranium and maybe rare earths, in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary because it is such a unique part of Australia.

I hope that the state government in South Australia will come to its senses. It says that exploration does not mean that it would allow a mining licence. If you are not going to allow people to mine minerals, why on earth would you allow them to explore for minerals within that area? My support goes to those people particularly in the Liberal Party and many of my state colleagues who are opposed to exploration in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. I hope that at some stage in the future there will be some sensible decisions taken which will allow Arkaroola to remain that wonderful wilderness sanctuary that it is and that the tremendous tourist operation and environmental protection that has been put in place by the Sprigg family will remain.

I could go on about many of the broken promises and the waste of this government, but I am not going to because it is all highlighted in the amendment that has been moved by Senator Abetz. However, I particularly refer to the carbon tax. Specifically at election time, the Prime Minister said that there would be ‘no carbon tax in Australia’. She gave an assurance during the campaign that there would be no carbon tax. So what happens when you cobble together an agreement with some Independents and the Greens as soon as the election is over and the government has been cobbled together? That promise is immediately broken and we now have the intention to introduce a carbon tax. My views on this issue are well known and I am not going to expand on them now. But that just highlights what we can expect from this current government—a party of higher taxation, a party that would wish to control our daily lives.

We have only to look at the current issue of restrictions on gambling that Independents, who wield considerable power in the lower House, are trying to put in place. I do not want to be living in an Australia where the government controls every action of our daily lives. We are all individual citizens. Anything that is done in regard to gambling or all the other things that this government would wish to control is a matter for the individual to decide and it should be left to individuals to make their own way in society.

This is the last time that I will speak in an address-in-reply debate. I look forward to the day when some of the issues that were raised by the Governor-General in her speech on behalf of the government are not issues of conflict between both sides of parliament and that we get to the stage where we will have a government of a different political persuasion that will govern in the interests of all Australians, that will allow for the individual freedoms that we stand for, and have always stood for, and that does not want to control the day-to-day activities of Australians in the way that this government does. I commend the amendment that has been moved by Senator Abetz to the address-in-reply and I urge senators to give it their support.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Abetz’s) be agreed to.