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

No, it is not a surprise. And of course there is always a report card coming out, and it is called the debt. Every time you want to know where this circus is off to, you just go to the Australian Office of Financial Management—AOFM for all the good people listening; Google it—and look at our debt. And you can track your debt. You can watch it grow. It is like one of those magic monkeys you used to buy from the cartoon characters: just add water and watch the debt grow! This is the crowd that is apparently at the tiller of our nation. This is the crowd that, if you believe them—if you look up at the vault of heaven—are the ones who can cool the planet. They are going to be part of it.

Even Senator Faulkner, who I believe is consistent but has just been a bit cowardly lately because he has not stood up for what he believed in, talks about: 'Other countries are going down this thing or they are "developing" a program. They are thinking about it.' That is what you have to worry about. They are thinking about doing something and, because someone is thinking about it, we must do it. He compared us to China. Well and good, and very clever they are. I have no problems with them being clever; I have a big problem with us being stupid. They are going to get carbon credits. They are going to get a whole heap of dirty little coal-fired power stations, turn them into a big new coal-fired power station and collect the carbon credits, and who will send the carbon credits? We will; we will send them the carbon credits. But we do not have any money, so where are we going to get the money from? We will borrow it. And who will we borrow the money off? We will borrow the money off them. Economics like that could only ever make sense in the Australian Labor Party, and it is probably because none of them have ever really run anything, or had a job. I take that back: they have all had a job, but they have never run a business.

This is part of where we are off to in this insane world. What will this world look like if they stay there? What on earth will Australia look like if this crowd stays there? Their own people cannot believe them. They have walked all over the left; to the right they look absolutely absurd. The NBN is another complete absurdity. The only thing we can do to fix it is get rid of them.