Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, the ministry, you are quite right. It will be the shadow ministry one time soon, Senator Collins, don't worry about that! When a government is so untrustworthy it looks for any sort of beacon of hope. We know that the Labor Party has now clung to the Greens as its beacon of hope. It thinks that if it aligns itself with the Greens it can somehow achieve some notoriety. When we see a government pursuing an ideological extremist agenda that is not going to have any impact in a policy sense on its desired outcome, when we know that the govern­ment is captive to any sort of extreme flank or pressure from an extremist lobby group like the Greens, we know that the Australian people are suffering a gross disservice.

I have no doubt that it is only a matter of time before this government is thrown out. I only hope that it will be thrown out well before this obnoxious, ill-advised, ill-considered and, quite frankly, deceptive tax is imposed upon the Australian people. Make no mistake: it will not have any impact on the environment. It will not create jobs. This just beggars belief. It will not do any of the things that the government claims, except take $12 billion out of the pockets of Australia's mums and dads and put it in the government's pockets for them to lord around and hand out largess as they see fit—including the funding of Kevin Rudd's promotion to the United Nations in the years ahead. Make no mistake: that is what they want more than anything else. Sorry, that is the second thing they want more than anything else—they want to get rid of Mr Kevin Rudd but they also want to cling to power. They think that by handing money back to taxpayers they can somehow ingratiate themselves with taxpayers.

I put to the Australian people that this is a fallacy. The Australian people have wised up to big government. They know it is wrong. They know this government is wrong. It cannot be trusted and, accordingly, it will be thrown out at the next election.