Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Further MySuper and Transparency Measures) Bill 2012. As Senator Macdonald has indicated, despite the fact that there is a list of coalition senators who would like to make a contribution on the record about this bill, they will not be able to because earlier the Labor Party in conjunction with their alliance partners, the Greens, voted to ensure that the bills we are debating today in the Senate will be subject to the guillotine. As such, at 8 pm tonight the guillotine will fall and no further debate will be had in the second reading stage on this bill.

This is, as the Senate would be aware, the second superannuation bill that we have dealt with today. The first was the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Unclaimed Money and Other Measures) Bill 2012 and again there were many senators on this side who wished to participate in the debate but were unable to because that bill was also guillotined. I listened to my colleague Senator Ian Macdonald's comments on that bill. It was an exceptionally eloquent speech. The one thing he said that really hit home in relation to that particular bill was this: by that legislation the Labor Party had sunk to a whole new depth. They were now legalising theft as a way of paying off their huge deficit in Australia. They have legalised the fact that they can steal Australian taxpayers' money, because they have no other way now of paying off the debt that they themselves have created.

Then we turn to this bill. This bill in its original form highlighted what is the fundamental ideological difference between the Australian Labor Party and their little alliance partners, the Greens, and those on this side of the chamber. As Liberals, our fundamental belief is that we believe in freedom of choice. We believe in the inalienable rights of freedom and of all peoples. Unlike those on the other side, we believe in a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives and maximises individual and private-sector initiative. Unlike those on the other side, we believe in the individual. We believe on this side of the chamber in offering the individual an ability to make a choice that suits their own circumstances.

The Labor Party's little alliance partners, the Greens, getting littler by the moment—in the ACT they were all but wiped out—are still able to be bought. We cannot forget that the Greens can always be bought. As I said earlier today when I addressed the Senate in relation to the fact that the Greens had clearly been bought on the guillotine motion, we all know that the Greens can be bought because the Greens were the political party that accepted what is now recorded in Australian political history, and that is saying something, as the largest political donation a political party in Australia has ever taken. You can only imagine when they got the phone call from Graeme Wood of wotif and he said, 'Guess what: $1.7 million is coming your way.' You can just imagine all their morals ran out the door. They did not run back to Hansard to see when they had stood up in this place and condemned the Australian Labor Party for taking donations, condemned the coalition for taking donations, because that is bad, apparently—very bad. But when you are the Greens and Mr Graeme Wood offers to buy you for $1.7 million, apparently that is okay.