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

Oh, I see! So you are just taking it away to spend it onshore in trying to deal with a problem you created, Minister—not you personally but your party—with all those illegal arrivals into Australia. So you shift the foreign aid budget from offshore and bring it onshore and spend it in Australia. And what did I hear this morning? I heard that Australia is the third biggest recipient in the world of its own foreign aid budget. Only a Labor Party could do that! And have we heard a murmur from the Greens about this? We hear about how the Greens all want to increase foreign aid. But when they are mates of the Labor Party, which diverts foreign aid from overseas onto Australian shores to look after that hideous problem that Ms Gillard and her crew have brought upon Australia, do we hear anything but a murmur from the Greens political party?

I expect that tonight in the budget there will be no money allocated for the Great Artesian Basin. Senator Waters has gone on for 20 minutes, just before me, telling us how important the underground aquifers are—in particular, the Great Artesian Basin. When I was conservation minister the Howard government spent some $40 million capping and piping and protecting the Great Artesian Basin. I suspect that tonight, because the Labor Party has run out of money—and run out of lenders, I suspect—that program will not be renewed again. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it. Like Senator Carr's foreign aid budget, that will be attacked to try to reduce the extent of the deficit we are facing. And do we hear the Greens political party talk about the Great Artesian Basin? No. But they are pretty big on coal seam gas because they see it as an issue of the day, an issue where they can try to resurrect their dwindling political fortunes. We have all seen how the Greens political party has nosedived in recent elections everywhere. So they look around desperately and say: 'Who can we fool to come onside and support us? Ah, the farmers! Let's pretend we are the farmers' friends.' Well, Senator Waters, if you are the farmers' friends, what are you doing for all those farmers and landholders up in my neck of the woods in Northern Australia who are in desperate straits because of the live cattle ban that you and your Labor Party mates inflicted on them? That action of the Labor government and the Greens, supported by Mr Windsor, has been the single most destructive action of any government in recent times towards our farming community.

And it is not only the northern beef cattle herd that is suffering, it is not only all of those people up there who are losing their homes, their livelihoods, their kids' schooling and, in many cases, their lives because of this stupid decision; it is now descending further down into our country and impacting on the southern beef cattle industry as well. The drought is exacerbating things but it all started with the Labor government's stupid decision on live cattle exports—that time when we insulted our closest neighbour, the Indonesian people, 240 million of them, by cutting off a substantial amount of their food supply without so much as a phone call; they read about it the next morning, as did the rest of us in Australia. Thank you, Senator Carr; what a magnificent action as a foreign minister trying to protect or build our relationship with our closest neighbour!