Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, the last person I would call 'Senator Evans' would be you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I can assure you of that.

What was said by some of those who are actually trying to drive investment in Geelong? I will go to the Geelong Advertisera very fine paper indeed—of 30 October. The Geelong Chamber of Commerce was quoted in the Geelong Advertiser:

"It sends the wrong message to people who want to invest in Geelong," executive officer Bernadette Uzelac said. "We should be making things easier to do business and invest in Geelong and not harder."

What did the Geelong Advertiser editorial say in relation to this, following an intervention by the Premier of Victoria, Mr Ted Baillieu, who expressed his outrage at the behaviour of the unions? The editorial on 20 July said:

Premier Baillieu is right to air the same concerns we did in this space last week when we said we feared for the impact this dispute might have on would-be investors in Geelong.

The editorial went on:

This dispute has to end now. The longer it continues, the more negative impact on future investment it will have and, the more indifference will be shown to the spirit if not the letter of the law.

Developments like this brewery are very important for our community.

Industrial action like we are seeing in South Geelong—despite court orders—does not send a great message to any company looking to establish a business here.

You would think that the local members would have some comment to make about this, because those picketers were there this morning. So I will go through the comments made by the local members. The first was a hard-hitting comment from the member for Geelong, Ian Trezise. He is a charming fellow but, like Mr Cheeseman, highly ineffectual. He is quoted in the Geelong Advertiser on 31 October:

Member for Geelong Ian Trezise urged the company and the unions to sort out the issue as soon as possible.

That is an inspired intervention! But it is probably more inspired than two other interventions that have not been made. We have heard what the Geelong Advertiser has said about the risk to investment into the great centre of Geelong in regional Victoria. We heard what the Chamber of Commerce said about the potential impact of this union picket line, which was found to be illegal, on Geelong. We know that it is going to cost, potentially, a $60 million investment and 100-plus jobs, so one would think that two people in particular might have a comment about this. The first person would be Mr Darren Cheeseman, the current member for Corangamite. The second person, you might think, would be the member for Corio, Mr Richard Marles. I will ask my colleagues to guess at how many comments were made by these two gentlemen in relation to the risk that Geelong faced. Who would like to have a guess?