Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Macdonald for that question. Yes, I can, but let me say first up that the Liberal-National Party here in this parliament and in Queensland stands for policies which support business, support investment and support jobs, whereas the Labor Party is demonstrably anti business, anti investment and anti jobs. The policies that we've pursued in recent years have helped create more jobs and attract more investment in Queensland: our business tax cuts for more than 540,000 Queensland businesses so far, our free trade agreements which are helping Queensland exporting businesses sell more Queensland products and services into key markets in our part of the world, and our ambitious infrastructure investment program, which is delivering results for Queensland—12,600 new jobs were created in Queensland in October and 131,000 over the past year.

But we know this is not good enough. We could do so much better if only we were working with a pro-business, pro-jobs, pro-investment government in Queensland. There are areas that could do with more investments, more projects and more jobs, in particular the Fitzroy and areas around Townsville and Rockhampton. That is why this government supports the Adani project. That is why the Liberal National Party in Queensland supports the Adani project unequivocally. But the Labor Party in Queensland, in the face of the Greens, is just another case of wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate: 'We're for it, we're against it, we're for it, we're against it.' That is the Queensland Labor Party. We need people standing up for jobs. We need Tim Nicholls and the Liberal-National Party standing up for jobs in Queensland. We need the Adani project to get up. We need the Labor Party in Queensland to get out of the way.