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

No; I am asking why you are bothering with this committee when one could be excused for thinking that what this committee will achieve is already being achieved by a commission set up by the Queensland government some months ago. I might say that it was set up by the new Queensland government—the Campbell Newman 'can do' Queensland government—after years of vacillation by the previous Labor government in Queensland. The Labor government in Queensland, prior to the stunning success of Campbell Newman, talked about this for four or five years, as I recall, and fumbled around. They showed the same sort of management capability that the federal government has shown with pink batts, school hall constructions, the carbon tax—now in its sixth version—and the mining tax.