Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to ask a question, but I feel that I do need to respond to some of that in addressing this bill. I mean, really, we have the Greens standing up in this place, talking proudly about having depressed the share price of great Australian companies like Woodside. I find it shocking that they would stand up in this place and say that. These are people who have just done a deal with the Labor government, a government that they describe as a corrupt ecocidal petrostate. This is the deal that you've done, Senator Shoebridge, and then you stand up in here and you talk about how wonderful it is that you depressed the share price of a great Western Australian company, a company that is in the super funds of hundreds of thousands of Australians, particularly Western Australians, and a company that employs thousands of Western Australians and, with secondary flow-on effects, employs probably tens of thousands. It supplies gas to DomGas of Western Australia, which provides energy and heat for industrial uses right across my home state of Western Australia.

WA is also the highest domestic gas user in Australia, so it provides heating, it provides gas for stoves and it provides gas for hot water. This is a great Western Australian company. It doesn't deserve to be treated with contempt by this place, by this Labor government in alliance with the Greens. Again, I can't get pass this: Senator McKim described the government they just did a deal with as a 'corrupt ecocidal petrostate'. This is the kind of alliance in government that we have between the Labor Party and the Greens. I do have some substantive questions for the minister, but I will leave it there for now.