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

You were here? You were. Well, have a look at the hours spent on Work Choices. Have a look at the hours spent on the Regional Forestry Agreements bill. At any suggestion of curtailment you would have the Greens up one after the other telling the Senate how undemocratic, how awful the coalition was and yet here in this year of the record number of guillotines, have you heard one peep from the Greens? Not one peep! In fact, that is not unusual because they were there providing the majority for the Labor Party.

Why do Australians take no notice of the Labor Party? Because they are led by a Prime Minister—a leader of the Labor Party—who deliberately told untruths to the Australian public before the last election. Why are Australians no longer listening to the Greens?—if you need evidence of that have a look at even the ACT election—because they see the complete hypocrisy of the Greens political party. If the coalition does something, it is bad, evil, the end of the world, but if the Labor Party does exactly the same thing then it is okay and they will support it.