Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Then we have members of the opposition saying 'hypocrites' and continuing to interject. Isn't it interesting how the conservatives are the law breakers when it comes to the standards of this place. But there you go.

The issue at stake here is the welfare of the Australian people. When Independents Windsor and Oakeshott got a huge advantage for rural Australia through environmental assessments—which will now proceed—funded from outside this package, we thought that was a real win. In House of Representatives the member for Denison was able to negotiate lifting the applicability of this tax from companies with a $50 million profit to those with a $75 million profit. This meant that $20 million a year would be taken out of the revenue raised, which is a loss equivalent to two or three hundred nurses or teachers—a real loss on the ground for average Australians. We simply said to the government that we want that money to be made up. We want this to be revenue neutral.

The opposition did nothing about that for the Australian people. They would see public schools further de-funded. They would see more closures of hospital wards. They would fail to do anything to help public transport, pensioners or people on extraordinarily low unemployment benefits, in an age of high employment, and without help to people in rural and regional Australia, because the National Party is the friend of the big miners before it is the friend of farmers. We have seen that writ large in this debate.

We have been able to work out a formulation with the government that will ensure that schools and hospitals do get their dues. The government has said that it does not want the details of this arrangement announced for some days, until closer to the mid-year statement on the economy. We argued about that. We wanted to release the details last night. It is up to the government to release the details and when it does—