Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to break this down even more simply. If you walk outside, hop on the tractor to do some work and you find that all the tyres have been let down again, you know who let your tractor tyres down—yep—it is those crazy next door neighbours, the Nats. They sit on their porches in there rocking chairs with pieces of straw hanging out of their mouths with their modified Adler shotguns cradled in their arms, because they cannot hit the tin cans and the flying foxes with their first shots. So what do you do? The crazy Nats have crept over in the middle of the night, again—they have done it for the last 18 months—terrorised the sheep, put in crop circles, flogged your fuel and let down all your tractor tyres again. Do you pump up three tractor tyres before you do your work or do you pump up four? Do you have a 19 per cent backpacker tax or do you have a 10.5 per cent tax? The crazy Nationals, with their 11-shot rapid-fire shotguns and Jackie Lambie obsession, would love it if you only pumped up three out of the four tyres they have let down. The Nationals want to rock on their verandahs, laugh and take pot shots with their Adler shotguns while farmers struggle to get their work done.

In all seriousness, everyone knows that the 19 per cent backpacker tax proposed by the Nationals will not work. It is not internationally competitive. A 10.5 per cent backpacker tax is internationally competitive. Supporting a 19 per cent backpacker tax is like pumping up three tyres after your crazy next door neighbour has let down four tyres. My message to the Nationals today is very simple, and understood by the people in the bush that the Nationals pretend to represent: if you are going to do the job, do it once and get it right. If this legislation is amended to 10.5 per cent by a vote in the Senate during the committee stage then the National senators must have the guts to vote in the third and final reading of this legislation against their own amended and improved legislation, legislation that they know will fix a problem that they have created and that they have done nothing about for well over 18 months. They sit in this chamber under the gaze of farmers whose livelihoods have been placed in jeopardy by their dysfunction and inaction. And they vote against their own reasonably amended legislation that will give immediate and lasting certainty and relief to tens of thousands of farming families and workers all over Australia, especially in my Tasmania. Between the drought, the floods, the dairy crisis and now this, we cannot take any more in Tasmania.