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

Absolutely. He accused Tony Abbott of making hysterical allegations when Tony Abbott said, 'As sure as night follows day, the Greens-Labor alliance will introduce a carbon tax.' Wayne Swan was out there assuring everybody that Mr Abbott was simply being hysterical, but we know one year later that the promises of Ms Gillard and Mr Swan mean nothing. One wonders about the promises that the minister, on behalf of Ms Gillard, is making in this bill and the promises he is making on regulations under this bill. Will they be kept or will they suffer the same fate as the promise of Ms Gillard that, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'?

What can you believe of anything the minister tells us? He is telling us what might be in the regulations; he is making certain commitments and promises. We have done that before. We as the Australian public actually believed Ms Gillard and Mr Swan a year ago when they said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' We have now worked out to Australia's absolute detriment that you simply cannot believe anything a government led by Ms Gillard says. I guess all of these debates are a little academic. We have the history of the Labor-Greens alliance. We know the leader, Ms Gillard, will promise you something to get a personal and political advantage and, as soon as it suits her, she will completely renege on that solemn promise.

Minister, your decision on the live cattle trade was about as well thought through as the carbon tax proposal. Perhaps that is not right. Perhaps you did give a bit more thought to the carbon tax proposal because you desperately need money from any source and this is one way you can get it. I guess you did give a bit of thought to how you could get more money into the coffers to make up for Labor's profligate, wasteful spending on a range of projects. The decision you made on the live cattle exports was made obviously without thought. Once you gave it a bit of thought you realised the huge mistake you had made. You have tried to ameliorate that.

I hear that the first shipment of live cattle is either on the way or being prepared for export to Indonesia now, but it is only a fraction of what was a very prominent industry that kept many beef producers, many Indigenous families and communities in productive, full-time work in the north, which you have almost destroyed with that ill-thought-through decision. In the context of this bill and this amendment, I am wondering whether there is some message of hope that you can give the northern beef cattle industry for something they might be able to gain from this to help them through the awful financial, business and personal situation many of them find themselves in at this time.