Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Very good interjections! If you really thought the government was adrift, and no doubt the Prime Minister did—I sense a desperate Prime Minister. The sharks might have been circling; I cannot be sure of that, but there was something very senseless about that press conference. If you really thought that, go back to your roots. Remember, it is the workers. Remember, Mark Latham made the same mistake in 2004. He thought he had to grab the green votes too, and he sold out the timber workers. We all know what the result of all that was.

Could anything be more bizarre than that press conference? I did touch on that press conference in the prime ministerial courtyard. Besides the press conference being mired in treachery—as I have quoted—and being flanked by Bob Brown, where was the Treasurer? Who has ever announced a major tax reform, greater than the GST, permeating every part of our lives, of $13 billion plus, without a Treasurer? It is not as if he was overseas. He was certainly in the building; there is no doubt about that. Maybe he was not told about it either. Or maybe he was just shamefaced about his own quotes, which I cannot believe. I was cherishing them to read out, and here they are. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably had too much pride to go, because this is what he said. On 15 August, Wayne Swan said:

… what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax …

And on 12 August, a few days before that, he said:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

So maybe, to give him the benefit of the doubt, he just was not going to turn up. After all, the cabinet had no idea about it. I know Senator Evans has answered this question in question time.