Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A turtleneck was it? Sorry. I take that interjection. They have moved very clearly to being a deal-making party. I would say there is another party that did that, and that was the Australian Democrats. They made some arrangements that did not bode well for them. It actually destroyed them. I do not think that will actually happen to the Greens, but this is a really big shift.

Since Senator Di Natale has taken over as the Leader of the Australian Greens, they have voted with government in the Senate to cut age pensions by $2.4 billion. I do not know whether that would have got through Senator Milne or Senator Bob Brown. I am not sure that they would have actually stumped up and whacked $2.4 billion off age pensions.

They voted to pass Mr Abbott's and Mr Hockey's budget measures. No-one liked the 2014 budget; not even the Liberals liked it. The Nationals certainly did not. But hang on; we have it here. They voted to pass Mr Abbott's and Mr Hockey's budget measures, cutting the age pension for 330,000 elderly Australians. They want to get into the real game here. They want to actually get into the economic game. They want to be players in the tax market. But then you hear Senator Whish-Wilson saying: 'We don't need a defence force. We shouldn't be spending $30 billion on defence.' My goodness! There is a bit of work that has been going on over there and it is not all good. So they voted to cut the pensions of 330,000 elderly Australians. I am not sure that Senator Milne or Senator Bob Brown would have led them in that way. That was June 2015.

They have also let big companies keep secret how much tax they pay. They are okay to whack the 200 wealthiest Australians, but the big companies are allowed to keep their taxation secret. These are decisions which have all led them to the electoral reform bill. Once you make a deal, once you get a little bit more skin in the game, once you get a little bit more access—a little bit more, 'Come into the Prime Minister's office and we can talk'—it is alluring and it is addictive. And they are playing in that field and they are doing it.

They have joined forces with the government to deter job-creating investment. They have voted with the Liberals and the Nationals to erect new barriers against investment by reducing Foreign Investment Review Board screening thresholds for proposed investments in agriculture and agribusiness. Mr Acting Deputy President Edwards, you and I know that if you are American you can do a billion dollars of business in Australia—no problem; FIRB does not even look at it. Sorry: $1 billion they would, but $999 million would go straight through.

Why is the capital that is coming from our largest trading partner subject to—with the voting of the Greens—more scrutiny? Why is that? Money is money. I can remember when the Japanese economy was at the tip of its peak, or the peak of its worth, so to speak, and they bought whole lots of stuff in Queensland. There are plenty of cheap golf courses in Queensland because the Japs—sorry—the Japanese came in and bought up wholesale. They bought it up. They invested everywhere. And then their economy went down the gurgler a bit and now they are not so prevalent. So capital flows in and out of Australia—