Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must be guilty! Apparently we are all beholden to corporate interests and corporations. I do not know if the strings are visible to people today, but I am just a puppet, apparently, for corporate interests. It is all based on conspiracies. It reminds me—there was a great movie, Team America, and one of the characters in that movie was asked to explain their claims about corporations. They said, 'Oh, yeah, well, corporations are out there, and they do corporationy things, and they go and make money.'

There is no evidence here at all. There is no evidence. And I have not just sat through and listened to Senator Ludlam's speech. I have read Senator Whish-Wilson's first contribution, his second reading speech, and also flicked through Senator Di Natale's speech, and there is no evidence. They have provided no evidence at all. They have only relied on base conspiracy theorists. That is where the Greens are ending up right now. They are relying on conspiracy theories rather than evidence. If these things were so bad, we would have some evidence of their ill effect. We would have some ill effect, because—

Senator Siewert interjecting—

Well, you are putting this bill up. And the requirement is on people bringing a bill to this chamber to provide evidence of why we should put it in place. We should not put legislation in place where there is not an identifiable problem that needs to be fixed. I think we can all agree on that. That is why we should pass laws in this place: to fix a problem that exists. Now, where is the problem?

We have already four FTAs with ISDS provisions in them. We have 21 bilateral trade agreements, bilateral investment agreements, with ISDS provisions in them. Some of those agreements go back 25 years. If there were problems with these provisions they would have manifested themselves. We have agreements with Singapore, Thailand, ASEAN and New Zealand, all with these provisions, but there are no problems. I will not name the 21 countries.

Over those 25 years—and this is something none of the Greens senators have mentioned—how many cases do you think the Australian government has been subject to, under these provisions? Senator Whish-Wilson, you probably know. How many cases?