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

What utter humbug and hypocrisy is the argument of the Greens, particularly, and the Labor Party on this issue! Let me just explain that to anyone who might be listening. The government is bringing forward some plans for marine protection. The disallowance motion of the Labor Party and the Greens is about stopping those marine protection plans. You've just heard 20 minutes of humbug from a Greens senator about protecting the marine environment, and what they are doing today is stopping protections for our marine parks. You always know when the Greens have run out of arguments, which the previous speaker did after about 30 seconds—they start using the old arguments of vested interests. When they run out of any sensible arguments, it's the vested interests that the Greens, particularly, and the Labor Party always try to bring up on any debate to try and align sensible Australians with coalition policy.

Of course, you know they've run out of arguments when they start talking about donors. The Greens talk about large corporate donors, but of course we remember that the Greens political party was the party that received the largest single donation from any corporate entity anywhere in Australia's political history. That was, of course, when Mr Graeme Wood gave them $1.6 million, the biggest donation to a political party ever. Lo and behold, would you believe, I was in a committee a few weeks later when Mr Bob Brown, then Senator Bob Brown, actually tried to get a taxation committee to give an exemption for the sort of online newspaper that Graeme Wood was hoping to set up. They talk about vested interests and hypocrisy and corruption, but the Greens should look in the mirror when it comes to those sort of things.

Now, back to the issue—