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

Senator Rhiannon sits here in her cotton clothes, yet she would not have us disturb one square metre of the earth to move the trash, to plant the seed. She would not have us take one cupful of water from the river to irrigate the cotton. As I said in a speech just the other day: God forbid the filthy puff of smoke that comes out of the harvester, which takes the cotton to the gin to be processed so that we senators, including Senator Rhiannon, can come here in our cotton garments—and our woollen garments, Senator Williams—and our leather shoes and our cotton socks, and sit on these leather or vinyl chairs, whatever they are. There's not a single thing within sight of any of us that has not been produced, in part sometimes, from the gift that animals provide as we propagate them for food and clothing and as we take the land, disturb it, and irrigate it in some instances, to provide food, fibre and all the other necessities of life. There's not a single thing! We would all be naked, standing in a virgin forest and sucking on day-old tofu if some of these Greens had their way with respect to how we are to live.

This is very serious. They get up with a bland face as if they're serious and, in their narrative, they pretend to believe what they're saying, when none of it is true. It is a gross act of dishonesty. There was not one single phrase in the speech by the senator—and I listened very carefully—about what alternative provision she may have for the 200,000 coalminers in Central Queensland who'll be displaced, and their families, and the businesses that rely upon them, the industries that employ—