Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my 27 years in the Senate, I have heard a lot of speeches. I have heard a lot of speeches from the Greens political party senators and I know a great many of them are based on deliberate mistruths. But never have I heard a speech like the one I have just been subjected to that is so full of misstatements, so full of deliberate wrongs that I am almost speechless.

Many people up my way would say that was a speech full of lies, absolute lies and distortions of fact. I will not say that, because the senator who just spoke would take any sort of point of order to stop me refuting the deliberate misstatements of fact she has just spent 20 minutes wasting this Senate's time in propagating and in so doing abused corporate companies that have done a hell of a lot of good around the world—and I will come to that later—and abused her political opponents with allegations of bribery and corruption, all of which she knows is simply not true.

I say to the previous speaker, if you have any evidence of this wrongdoing, which you have just spent 20 minutes alleging, please take it to the authorities. Please take it to the police or to the corporate agencies and have it properly tested. You cannot just get up in this chamber and have a list of mistruths about particular individuals and companies and try and pass that off as fact. If the senator had any skerrick of evidence, even a remote skerrick of evidence, she would report it and give the evidence to the police and the corporate authorities but of course she will not because that speech was just a litany of deliberate mistruths set out to appease the few people left who support her political party.

The former speaker talked about people power. I happened to be in Townsville when Adani announced that it would create its headquarters there and immediately employ up to 600 people, which, in a town like Townsville with 11 per cent unemployed, is a huge boost to the employment opportunities in that town. As I went in to that very well publicised opening of the office, the regional headquarters of Adani, by the Queensland Premier, by the Townsville mayor—both Labor people—and by Senator Canavan—a federal minister—there was a huge people power protest outside. When I went in, there were five people there from Townsvilles population of almost 200,000. There were five people opposing it. This is the 'people power' that the previous senator spoke about. But I have to concede, by the time we left that event after about an hour later, the number had swelled; it had gone up to nine in the hour that we were there.