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

Senator Williams says, 'They don't know themselves,' but I was going to go on to say that I quite often find myself with that same problem with the Greens. The party—not individuals, I hasten to add—is full of hypocrisy on most of the angles they approach. I cannot wait to speak on something that is coming up very shortly in the Senate, the Tasmanian logging issue, and I know Senator Abetz, Senator Colbeck and others no doubt will want to have a few words on that.

To me, the Greens are hypocritical in their policy approach to many things, but it does appear from my very limited understanding of the Greens' approach to the issue of boycotting Jewish businesses that there are certainly contradictory and conflicting results and approaches. I suspect many of the broader membership of the Greens would want to boycott Jewish businesses for reasons that they would justify to themselves. I appreciate that Senator Brown—whilst I have little respect for his policy approach, I do have some respect for his political cunning—realised that this particular issue cost the Greens a seat in the New South Wales parliament at a recent election. Senator Brown realised that the party in New South Wales was on a course which most New South Welshmen found repugnant. He stepped in to try to, as Senator Boswell said, 'airbrush' that out of the policy of the Greens political party.

We have to be clear and unequivocal on this. I am, as I say, disappointed that the commissioner responded in the way that he did. I would have hoped that this was such an important issue, an issue that received almost unanimous support from this chamber for the ACCC to look into it, that there might have been a different response. I have not been able to fully study Mr Sims's explanation of why he did not but I would have thought it was such an important issue that the comments that Senator Brown and Senator Abetz made on this particular issue would warrant a very serious consideration by the Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

I conclude by again saying how proud I am of Senator Boswell, who has raised this, and my other colleagues. I know it is an issue that Senator Abetz has very strong views on as well. I know that many in the government also have very strong views. We must never allow Australia to be placed in a situation where businesses are attacked, where people's livelihoods are attacked, where their freedom to do what everyone else in Australia can do is impeded upon simply because the owners of those businesses happen to be of Jewish extraction. We must never let that happen in Australia. Anything that we, the ACCC or Victoria Police can do to stop that is something that should be encouraged and supported.