Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Through you, Chair, if Senator McKim had a case, he could make it as a debating point, but why would the Greens start focusing on facts now? Why would they change the habit of a lifetime and start focusing on facts? I have given some facts about the tourism spend, so that debunks a lot of the claim that somehow these industries cannot co-exist; they absolutely can. They have done so for decades. We have seen a massive increase in the tourism spend at a time when we have seen a massive increase in coal exports from Queensland. Let's go through some of those facts. They have co-existed, side by side, over the last 60 years. International tourism to the reef grew from 214,000 in 1999 to 248,000 in 2016, in the same period that coal exports from Queensland grew from around 94 million tonnes to 221 million tonnes. So we have seen the growth of both industries. Isn't that a great thing? Isn't that something we should be celebrating rather than, as the Greens would like to do, kill an industry. That is what they want to do.