Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The report from the Defence Materiel Organisation, as usual, is a good one. It does highlight some issues. I was trying to get Senator Cameron to refer to the page in the report that he was speaking about. Of course, he did not, because, even though he has been here for a while now, he never seems to bother following the rules of the Senate, which are there for a reason and which should be followed.

One of the difficulties that the Defence Materiel Organisation have experienced, which they refer to, is the cost of doing business in Australia. The carbon tax imposed by the Labor government, which Senator Cameron and the Greens were part of, simply made manufacturing in Australia uncompetitive, and that included defence manufacturing. It is so sad that a party like the Labor Party, which is supposed to be looking after the workers, did so much to destroy workers' jobs and send jobs overseas. That is one of the problems for the defence industry and the Defence Materiel Organisation: procuring manufacturing activity in Australia was made so difficult because of the additional costs of doing anything because of the Labor Party's carbon tax.

Under the Labor Party's carbon tax and under the watch of Senator Kim Carr as industry minister, we know that the Australian car industry was shut down. It became entirely uncompetitive. Through evidence given to the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, we know that the unions are jobs' worst enemy in Australia. The corruption in the trade union movement, of which Senator Cameron and the senator from Far North Queensland are a part of—they are all ex-union people—