Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is quite clear what is happening here. What is happening is that the Labor Party are clearing the decks for an election. It is the most bumbling process that one would ever see. It is an approach that General Braxton Bragg would be very proud of. The only man who could turn a tactical victory into a strategic defeat was Braxton Bragg, and now there is also the Australian Labor Party. We have seen them fumble along and tumble along. They started with an ETS; then they decided not to have an ETS. They started with Prime Minister Rudd, and they decided not to have Prime Minister Rudd. Then they stated there would not be a carbon tax, and then there was a carbon tax. Then they said the carbon tax would never change, and now it is going to change. Then they said they would never have a Pacific solution for immigration, and now there is a Pacific solution for immigration. We know what they are doing, but it is just such a rolling fiasco. They said they were going to have a surplus, yet we currently have about $244 billion in gross debt and we have borrowed in excess of $10 billion since the start of the financial year on top of that. It is just absurd. Everything they do has become a total absurdity.

Now they have a price on carbon because they believe that Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Swan can change the climate. I will believe it when I see it. Their price on carbon will have as much chance of changing the climate as a price on sadness would have of changing tears or a price on sickness would have of making the world healthy. It does nothing. The ingenuity of man is the process that is going to take things ahead, and it is not done by tax. The only thing a tax inspires is tax evasion. The only thing this tax inspires is the absolute resentment of the Australian people. They have picked up on that, but why do we have to wait till 1 July 2015? If we are going to have to buy this dud product, why wait till then? If you are forcing us to buy this dud product, why not just drop the price now? What is this interim period all about? What is the purpose of an artificially high price right now? I do not like the price at all and I want to get rid of the whole lot, but what is the point? If you are going to afflict us with this insanity, can't you just afflict us with a cheaper priced insanity sooner? Why do we have to wait till 2015? You have already acknowledged by your own actions that it is absurd, so why not just go to the lesser absurdity now rather than leave us with the greater absurdity for that period of time?

It is interesting. Remember, once upon a time brown coal was an evil rock. There was a naughty rock called brown coal. This naughty rock must be put outside and spanked. Naughty, bad rock! Of course, it was always peculiar, because if the rock passed across water and went to another country it became a righteous rock. Then it was righteous brown coal. It was naughty in Australia but righteous once it passed over water and went overseas. But now it has become righteous back in Australia again. Now it is righteous coal again and it can continue to be used in the Hazelwood Power Station. The correct decision in the first instance was to keep the power station running and provide cheap power to the people—one of the fundamental things to provide the basics of life. That is what a government is supposed to do. But it is just another one of these absurd backflips. There is no meaning to what they do.

So how do they try to cover it up? Obviously now we have all this conjecture within the Labor Party, because with the Labor Left it is like The Silence of the Lambs. It is the silence of the Labor Left. They are so torn apart by their position. Now they do not believe in refugees; they believe in banging them up wherever—Nauru. They are trying to make themselves philosophically pure again, so today we had this absurdity: all of a sudden a fishing boat has become the mechanism of assuaging their guilt. They have now manifestly encompassed in a fishing boat the path to left righteousness. Correct me if I am wrong, but it was only days ago that the same crowd was absolutely pillorying me because of sovereign risk and populism. I was accused of inciting the demons of sovereign risk and populism. I heard Dr Craig Emerson in op-ed after op-ed in the Australian saying what a terrible person I was. I was beginning to agree with him; maybe I am.

But today out of nowhere comes a statement that is an absolute affront to sovereign risk. This time they have actually bought the boat. It is sitting up at Brisbane, I think. No, it is not; it is sitting at Whyalla in South Australia.