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

Wait and see. You were the one who wanted to have a bet with me on who would win the Queensland election. At least most of your colleagues would only bet on how big the margin would be. I think you are saying that the Labor Party was going to win it! So I take no notice of your predictions of what a decent government in Queensland might be.

The Queensland coalfields commission is made up of a number of people, as I read out in my second reading speech. They will be there until the job is finished, Senator, so there is no suggestion of them not having the wherewithal to do what they want to do. But I come back: it makes a bit of a mockery of the system when this committee stage is meant to try and get sensible answers to reasonably sensible questions—I say 'reasonably' because I do not want to get—