Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If I seem disappointed and a bit flat, Madam Deputy President, it is because I feel robbed. I thought I was going to have 20 minutes to respond to our colleagues the Greens, and to be reduced to just four minutes is going to make my effort difficult. In doing that, we need to be crystal clear on what we are being asked to consider here by the Greens in this bill.

This bill is not about some new found interest in the Greens about the integrity and profile of foreign companies who invest in our nation. If that were true, one would suspect that they would have been in this place with bills previously on the hundreds and hundreds of occasions that foreign investment occurs in this nation. They were in coalition with our friends in the Labor Party for six years, and not once did they introduce legislation when they had the power to do so, to influence a decision about investment in this nation by a foreign company.

That being the case, I do not think it is unreasonable for us to draw the only inference that can be drawn—that is, this is not about Adani, this is not about the integrity of Adani and this is not about the profile of Adani. This is about killing any future development in the coal industry—in this case in particular—in my home state of Queensland. This is about denying thousands of young men and women who are currently unemployed. Some of the figures around Townsville and some of the areas in Central Queensland are up to nine per cent. This is about killing the prospects of their jobs. This is about denying the 14,000 workers who did work in the coal industry and all the allied support industries at one stage the opportunity to return to the dignity of full employment. This is about stifling the ongoing investment that comes with transformational, generational opportunities like this to develop the economy of a region and a state and then, indeed, all the benefits that flow from that to the nation. This is about stopping people—owners of empty homes in their thousands in Central Queensland—having the opportunity to have them tenanted once more by people coming to develop this wonderful opportunity.

This was a sleight of hand, this bill. This bill is fraudulent. The presentation by the senator earlier was in itself fraudulent. You can take offence to that if you like. You wrote—