Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. You have every member of the National Party and every senator from the National Party in there squabbling, trying to pull the toy of the National Party leadership apart. All the while, regional Queenslanders are left in the lurch, looking for jobs, looking for job security, looking for an end to casualisation and labour hire, looking for decent health services, looking for infrastructure—all the kinds of things that the National Party should actually be focusing on.

To their credit, the outgoing Leader of the National Party, Mr McCormack, joined by the member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry, today admitted that people in regional Queensland don't want to see the Nationals have another leadership challenge, especially in the middle of a pandemic. But that's exactly what Mr McCormack's and Ms Landry's colleagues have served up again today. When regional Queenslanders are wondering when they will get their vaccine from this government, they get another leadership challenge. When regional Queenslanders are wondering when the National Party will finally do something about casualisation and labour hire, they get another leadership challenge from the National Party. That's what we know lies ahead, because it happens every six months or so. We have leadership challenge after leadership challenge in the National Party, while all these issues in regional Queensland get ignored by the party that claims to represent them.

It's all coming to a head, of course, around what this government's policy is around emissions. If anyone knows what this government's position is on net zero emissions, please explain it to me, because I certainly don't know, and I don't think anyone in Australia knows either. We've got the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, claiming that he wants to get to net zero emissions preferably by 2050. We've got the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, out there saying that Mr Morrison has already committed to net zero emissions by 2050. We've got Mr Pitt and any number of other National Party members saying that's not the government's position. In fact, when we were asking Senator Birmingham and other ministers about this today, to agree that the government's position is to get to net zero emissions by 2050, preferably, who was sitting over there shaking her head? It was the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator McKenzie. The Nationals have not signed up to this. We don't know what the government's position is. (Time expired)