Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Do not go on now Senator Abetz! You were not prepared to block the loophole; you were not prepared to raise the cash that we need. Now we have this extraordinary situation where the Minister for Resources and Energy—who basically sat there and allowed the mining companies just to run rings around him, and the Treasury and the Prime Minister—has now disappeared from view. He is the invisible man of the cabinet as the MRRT is shown to be a disaster in terms of raising money.

But the core issue here is: how are we going to improve it? How are we going to fix it so that we do raise the money? The core issue is that we need to raise the money. That is why the coalition's position is so appalling and threadbare on this, because they do not want to charge the big miners anything at all. They want to let them off the hook while refusing to increase Newstart, while agreeing to take money out of the pockets of single parents and while even opposing $4-a-week increase—$4 a week! The coalition were not prepared to see for people on Newstart allowance and youth allowance. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.