Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

The government opposes these amendments. But, in opposing, let me just say: I'm getting increasingly confused by what the Greens stand for. I mean, the other day we had former Greens leader Bob Brown fighting against renewable wind energy, having previously opposed renewable hydro energy, and now we've got Senator Rice from the Greens political party fighting for more money for roads. I mean, what happened to the Greens? If you keep going, you might end up coming to our side and voting for income tax cuts at some point in the future! The truth is that the government has significantly boosted federal funding for infrastructure, just in the last budget, from $75 billion to $100 billion. So our pipeline of infrastructure investment over the medium term has increased by $25 billion—just in our last budget.

For the reasons that we indicated during the second reading summing up, we don't support these amendments. In relation to the issue of the PRRT and the royalties that Senator Rice raised, she knows that the Senate has already voted overwhelmingly to reject that proposition—and it is not really captured in this amendment anyway.