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

I understand the Privileges Committee report—all of us here know what the Privileges Committee can and cannot do. But allegations have been made and methinks that perhaps it is not the Privileges Committee that should be investigating these things but perhaps the police. That would be something that I think should be more closely pursued.

As I was saying, this funding proposal for the anticoal movement is a typical Greenpeace-Greens blueprint for how you destroy Australia. It has happened in the timber industry and it has happened in the forestry industry, and here is the blueprint. It tells how you can make it happen in the coal industry. The strategy is all set out there for anyone to see: disrupt and delay key infrastructure, constrain the space for mining, increase investor risk, increase cost, withdraw social licence, build a powerful movement. And so it goes on, chapter and verse in fine detail, as to how you can destroy an industry and destroy Australia. It is this political party, supported by these same groups, that is supporting the Queensland government on Saturday and wanting the Queensland government to get back into power. We have seen the price of that in Queensland—shut down Cape York and shut down western Queensland. It does not matter to the latte sippers in the leafy suburbs of Brisbane if people in the north, who make their livelihoods out of that country, are dispossessed; it does not matter if Indigenous people in Cape York and western Queensland are dispossessed; it does not matter if those of us in rural Australia and regional Queensland who rely on farming and mining are dispossessed—because the Greens want to lock more and more places away. Don't worry about that! The Greens, who generally live in the leafy suburbs of Brisbane, do not care, as long as it does not worry them. Shut down the means of production! This document I refer to—partly funded it seems again by Mr Graeme Wood—about stopping the coal export boom is a cracker. I would urge everyone to have a look at that and understand how the radical green movement, supported by the Greens political party, works in this area.

This report of the Auditor-General on the mismanagement of the bike paths component of the local jobs stream of the Jobs Fund should be compulsory reading for any voter before they go to vote in any election anywhere. They will see yet again that you simply cannot trust the Labor Party and their Green mates with money. They are incompetent, have no financial understanding and just waste taxpayers' money. (Time expired) I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

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