James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I shall focus on the achievements of this Liberal-Nationals government, who have done so much for Australia, so much to ensure that Australia transitions to a new economy where there are jobs for people, rather than just lies. We understand that Australia should focus on our resources, because we are a resource-rich country.

And talking about resources, let us talk about the support of the Labor Party for our resources sector. Hands up, over in the Labor Party—for anybody listening at home—wave your hands in the air: do you support our resources sector? For those who are listening at home, no-one put their hands up, because the modern Labor Party does not support the resources sector, because they have been captured—it is fascinating: they have become an axis of incompetence and an axis of far-left green politics, because Labor are focused on the preferences of the Greens at every election. So, we have a Labor Party that does not support the resources industry. In Queensland we have the New Hope mine at Acland, which is a wonderful opportunity for more people to get more jobs. We can talk about Adani and the wonderful things Adani will do for Australia that this government has pushed. But has the Labor Party really come out strongly and supported Adani? Not really, actually, because they are so worried, they are so concerned about Greens preferences. Of all the many factions in the Labor Party—there are more factions in the Labor Party than there are M&M's in a packet—the most important one is the green one, the green faction in the Labor Party, because they need their preferences for the coming election.

So, we have a modern Labor Party that specialises in being below average. They are not even a C minus; they are a D, they are an E, they would probably even be a Z, if I were a teacher marking them on what they are doing for modern Australia. They are playing politics with motions like this. They have not put a motion up to talk about serious policy issues, a motion to talk about how we deal with youth unemployment. We could talk about the PaTH project, or what we are going to do with taxation reform. We could talk about how we want to lower people's taxes. They could put a motion up on free trade agreements. But no, they do not support the free trade agreements, the wonderful agreements of Andrew Robb, a fantastic person, followed by Steven Ciobo, a great minister. They do not want to talk about the policy issues, because they know that on every single policy issue we have won and are winning. We are a government that is delivering for Australia, and the only thing the Labor Party are delivering is, sadly, a below-average approach to public policy development in this country.