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

Anyone from Queensland who might be listening to this broadcast this afternoon will know that it is uncontested that the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland eventuated in West End, a suburb of Brisbane, in a West End coffee shop over a cup of latte between officials of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens political party before the state election a couple of years ago. That is fact. That is uncontested by anyone. Even the Labor Party in Queensland accept that as fact.

As Senator Boswell said today in question time, this ridiculous decision on the Embley mine in Cape York, a mine that would provide jobs for hundreds of Queenslanders, many of them Indigenous Queenslanders, was stopped. It was inquired into by the federal minister, who is a Labor Party politician, the very day that the Greens political party in Queensland announced that it was giving preferences to the Australian Labor Party in the Queensland election and particularly in the seat of Ashgrove.

Fortuitously of course, many Greens supporters do not follow their how-to-vote cards. Many of the candidates—for example, two of the candidates in the state election in Queensland in the Townsville region for the Greens political party—will not be directing preferences to the Labor Party. They at least are principled when it comes to that. The Greens political party and the Labor Party in Queensland have done this deal and the price for the deal was to stop the Embley mine in Queensland.

I just put this to the senators: if the Greens had their way, there would be no mining in Queensland. They have actually stopped forestry in Queensland. It used to be a very substantial job-creating industry in Queensland. They have practically stopped fishing in Queensland. With their support for the carbon tax, what little manufacturing industry there was in Queensland is now rapidly going overseas. With what they are doing with the sea freight and the cabotage on the seafront industries, they will close down the cement industry in Gladstone and encourage it to go overseas. You will be able to bring ships full of cement cheaper from Asia into Queensland and you will be able to send cement from Gladstone up to Townsville in Queensland. The Greens and the Labor Party support all of these actions. So in the end, what jobs will there ever be in Queensland in the future? Everything will be locked up.

You look back in history and you see that if a political party, like the Communist Party of old, wanted to create strife and foment in any particular country around the world, what did they do? They created a huge pool of the unemployed so that there was rioting and insurrection on the streets. Now perhaps it is taking a step too far to say that this is the goal of the Greens political party in Queensland, but one must wonder where people in Queensland are going to work. Where are they going to earn money? Where are they going to gain employment if every single aspect of operations in Queensland is shut down?

The Greens do not want dams in Queensland. Dams of course create wealth on irrigated farms, but the Greens do not want that either. And the Labor Party, because they are now controlled by the Greens political party, simply roll over and go along with them. Mr Deputy President Parry, truthfully I fear that should this Greens-Labor Party coalition in Canberra continue any longer, Australia will be in dire straits. We know already in Queensland that the Queensland government, despite having some of the greatest means of wealth and jobs creation in the Federation, is now struggling with a debt burden of over $90 billion. We have lost our triple-A credit rating, and this is because the Australian Labor Party, led by Anna Bligh, and the Greens political party in Queensland who support them with preference deals—as happened in exchange for the Embley mine project—continue to drive Queensland economy down and create unemployment. Senator Boswell's question today was right on the mark. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.