Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to add to the debate on this. If getting a good policy outcome that is in line with your long-held party policy is doing a deal then I am quite happy to say that we have done a deal. So what? This is exactly what we are in parliament for. We are in parliament to get deals for the people who vote for us, for our members and for the people who share the same philosophies as us. As I have said, Senator Milne has campaigned for a long time to get a land register and a register of water holdings. We have managed to do that with the government, and I once again thank them for working with the Greens in this respect.

In relation to what comes next, I am very hopeful that, once we build a database and we have a register, we can then look at potential FIRB triggers or thresholds for water holdings. But let's deal with this first. That is something I would like to see in the future; I have made that very clear. The government has said that they would consider that, but they have not agreed to that. Nevertheless, that is something we think would make perfect sense. I think we need a bigger discussion around what is in the national interest. We all know that the national interest test as it stands now can be highly politicised. I think that, if we can get better parameters around that, so be it.

Unfortunately, I do not have the policy here in front of me. If I had printed it, I would read it word for word. Senator Milne in 2013 went to the election with a policy on what should be included in the national interest test. There were of course, as you would expect from the Greens, issues around food security and climate change that we would like to see included in this. We are up front. It is on our website. I encourage people listening to this to go there and have a look.

Once again, I think this really has nothing to do with xenophobia; this has got to do with collecting good data. As I mentioned earlier, you cannot manage what you do not monitor, and it is a shame that we do not have that in place at the moment.