Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Temporary Chairman. I hoped I was and I certainly intended to talk about this bill. I thought the approach that Senator Cormann adopted on this bill was one which all Australians would support and is certainly the one that I as a senator will be supporting. What I cannot stand in this committee stage is the absolute hypocrisy of the Greens political party. Anyone listening to the debate on this bill would have heard Senator Brown railing about the wealthy people and the billionaires and how they should not be allowed to get away with it.

In the context of that debate, I ask Senator Brown about those that he calls billionaire, multinational companies, mining companies, Woolworths and Coles. I do not agree with his descriptions, as I do not agree with his descriptions on this amendment before the chair, but why is he so opposed to the foreign, wealthy individuals or companies that he is talking about in this debate yet in the flood levy he let them off absolutely scot-free? It did not cost them a cent. It cost the local butcher and baker a heap and will continue to do so while this flood levy is on. Thanks to Senator Brown supporting the government on this, those multinational companies—the billionaires he talks about who run these companies—have been let off scot-free.

I challenge Senator Brown. Perhaps it is not directly on message, but he refused to answer the question during that debate. He scurried away, joined his mates in the Labor Party and got that tax through on ordinary Australians, but when we suggested it should be a more wide-ranging tax—that is, an income tax that everyone paid to fix up the flood damage in my state and other states—where was Senator Brown? He had scurried away. He was not game to come back and answer those questions then. So here is his opportunity. Perhaps he can do it now. A division having been called and the bells being rung—