Rod Culleton (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson, I should say this is not my first speech.

In speaking to support this amendment of the government procurement rules, I find it astounding that anyone in this chamber could argue against such a self-evident amendment to the Commonwealth government procurement contracts. If products do not meet Australian standards, they should not be imported at all, let alone procured by the Commonwealth government. Given the historic evidence supporting the usage of local products and/or, at the very least, ensuring local standards, it is essential that the same criteria are used to evaluate the suppliers of any contract and the product they would supply. Using the parameters of the triple bottom line, these amendments pass with flying colours and they put Australian products on the level playing field that this government claims to endorse.

In effect, the result will mean that Australian products will compete for procurement contracts on an equal footing with imports, as they should. And they will win, hands down. It means buying the best, and buying local is the best. Even the environment benefits from buying local—no transport emissions from freighting goods across the oceans, goods are produced under Australian workplace safety, and ethical work standards and quality standards are unquestionable. Even the Greens cannot turn their backs and walk away from that reasoning.

A constituent, Gordon Miller, wrote to me about this very matter just days ago. Mr Miller is ex-Army and appalled, as I am, that our military are dressed in Chinese made uniforms, allegedly to save money. I recall the incident back in 2012 when our recently returned soldiers marched in the Anzac Day parades while their imported shoes lost their soles. Those soldiers marched on and showed up our government leaders' procurement guidelines as a national disgrace. They are not a money saver at all but a total waste of money and a shameful indictment of those guidelines. Those military boots are now made in Australia by RM Williams—which I am happen to be a very good advocate for—and there have been no complaints or incidents since.

As a listed and registered Australian inventor and as a primary producer I fully understand and appreciate, through the concept that I created of a world-leading feed delivery system, how important it is to allow Australian product to compete on the same quality requirements as any imported goods.

Senators need to understand that they are doing favours for the Australians employed to meet these contracts—quite the reverse. This nation's workers and businesses are providing the Commonwealth government with goods and services of the standard that this government has set. World-class standards and world-class products are the result. For them to accept goods of any lesser standard is to demean and repudiate the very legislation and standards this chamber has set for our nation.

If the government were to use the accepted framework for establishing guidelines to evaluate their choice of supplier in procurement contracts—that is, the triple bottom line of social, environmental and financial factors—it is clear that they would create benefits in all three.

Further, I wish to alert this chamber of my intention to write to the former members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services about their inquiry into the impairment of customer loans, to alert them to purported evidence given by the ANZ bank and others which was misleading and inaccurate. Proof of that inaccuracy and deception is contained in this document that I hold, my 'book of truth', which I proudly presented to that inquiry when I was asked to give evidence.