Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens are an extremist political organisation and should be recognised as such by all mainstream political parties. That recognition should extend to refusing to do preference deals such as those Labor is doing with the Greens in New South Wales. Greens’ policies are anti family and anti jobs. Most importantly, they are soft on drugs and hard on coal. Their priorities are upside down and inside out.

The Greens’ election pledges include an upgrade of the legal status of all animals from ‘property’ to ‘beings’. This is a radical move aimed at controlling livestock management practices. In Victoria, the Greens offered free gay, lesbian and transgender support services for students as young as 13. I am surprised they did not offer this service to the animal ‘beings’ as well.

Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon told Radio 2GB on 12 March:

We’re also looking to advance adoption rights. If the Labor government—if they’re elected—do not honour their commitment to give all gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt children, the Greens will bring forward a private members’ bill on this issue.

The operative words are ‘do not honour their commitment’. That would suggest that Labor has done a deal with the Greens to introduce legislation to allow gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals to adopt children if Labor is re-elected on 24 March.

What other deals has Morris Iemma done in return for Green preferences? Last year there were reports that clinically produced heroin would be imported into Australia to trial a new treatment for long-term addicts under the Victorian Greens’ drug policy. AAP reported on 6 July:

Supervised heroin injection rooms, such as the one running in Sydney’s Kings Cross, would also be trialled in Victoria while the policy also proposes to scrap all criminal penalties for drug use.

The production, sale or trafficking of illicit drugs would remain an offence, but users would only face a court order requiring them to participate in a health scheme.

Greens health adviser Dr Richard Di Natale added that the drug would not be manufactured in Australia but imported from pharmaceutical companies that supplied other heroin trials across the globe.

On 14 March, NSW Premier Morris Iemma condemned as ‘absurd and disgusting’ a plan by the Greens to decriminalise the use of drugs, including ice. Mr Iemma said such a policy would never go ahead because fair-minded people would not support it. He said:

It is just an absurd, ridiculous and disgusting policy.

Mr Iemma said that any MP who supported such a policy was ‘completely out of touch with reality’. What hypocrisy! If the New South Wales Premier were fair dinkum, he would not do preference deals with a party that comes up with, in his own words, ‘ridiculous and disgusting policy’.

The Greens ‘so soft on drugs’ policy states:

15. Support a rigorous scientific trial of heroin prescribed by accredited medical professionals, with intensive psychosocial support, to registered addicts ...

…         …         …

17. Fund a few additional medically supervised injecting rooms and expanded needle exchange programs in locations where such facilities will improve community health and social outcomes …

…         …         …

19. Support trials of analysis of drugs at dance and other venues to reduce health risks …

…         …         …

23. Make the possession and growing of small numbers of cannabis plants for personal use not illegal;

24. Work towards responsible alternatives to cannabis prohibition, including regulation of cultivation and sale to adults with appropriate legal restrictions and health warnings …

…         …         …

26. Allow drugs to be regulated and prescribed for medicinal purposes based only on their therapeutic and palliative effects …

…         …         …

34. Support the immediate repeal of the legislation that enables the use of sniffer dogs for drug detection where there are no prior reasons to suspect a drug offence has occurred, and still allow for the use of sniffer dogs in customs-related contexts and points of entry security.

The Greens’ policy on drugs makes them the drug-friendly party. They want doctors to prescribe heroin and cannabis. They want marijuana to grow in the backyard next to the Hills hoist. This is how they would green Australia.

The Greens’ economic policy is a classic oxymoron. Firstly, they opposed the tax cuts in the 2006 budget, where Mr Costello handed out $37 billion in tax cuts. In their own words:

The Greens are committed to phasing out the coal industry.

Their policy states:

The Greens will work to:

• stop the development of new coal mines and the expansion of existing coal mines and coal handling infrastructure ...

…         …         …

• provide just transitions for communities that have traditionally derived income and jobs from coal mining operations;
• phase out of all subsidies to coal mining and impose levies on coal mines to pay for just transitions, mine rehabilitation and investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency; and
• expose “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage as dangerous myths that distract from the urgent task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Queensland Greens are even more specific, saying:

The Queensland economy is unbalanced because of its dependence on coal exports and coalfired power stations.

The policy, at point 3.6, states that they would:

Place a moratorium on issuing of licences for new coal-fired power stations.

Point 3.7 states that they would:

Begin to phase out coal-fired power stations, starting with older, less energy efficient stations.

Australian mining and mineral processing industries employ more than 320,000 Australians, and ABARE forecast that the combined earnings from Australian minerals and energy exports will increase by eight per cent in 2007-08 to $116.5 billion.

Labor want us to believe that they support working Australians but, by doing preference deals, they are endorsing the sort of left-wing, job-strangling extremism that Bob Brown was peddling in Central Queensland recently. Bob Brown says that we have to stop coal exports and that we have to do it within three years—

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Faulkner interjecting—

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I think you were referring to Senator Bob Brown.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bob Brown says that we have to stop coal exports and that we have to do it within three years. But it would be absolutely irresponsible to shut down Australia’s $25 billion export coal industry, which supports 30,000 regional jobs and is the backbone of many regional communities in Queensland. Coal accounts for around 80 per cent of Australia’s power and is Australia’s single largest export commodity.

The Australian Coal Association estimates that 130,000 families are directly or indirectly dependent on the coal industry. Even more families would lose their livelihood if energy intensive manufacturing industries were forced offshore by power generators no longer having access to coal. Senator Brown said that to suddenly ban coal exports would be massively dislocating—he has got that right—but that we have got to do it and we have to do it within a period of three years, a term of government. Senator Brown treats mining-dependent families with utter contempt. They can be moved, reallocated or dismissed. He does not say where to or how. The Greens’ policy is that the transition itself would be funded from the mining industry. How that is going to happen while they are going out of business is anyone’s guess. The only thing that Senator Brown does not want to move is trees. He would go to jail for a tree while sending mining families to the bankruptcy courts.

Peter Garrett has refused to reject a ban on new mines in the Hunter Valley, saying that the expansion of the coal industry such as we have seen in the upper Hunter region over the past decade is a thing of the past. How long will it be before other mining industries also come under attack from a Labor Party prepared to back the anti-mining policies of the radical Greens and include a left-wing, anti-mine protester on their front bench? The coalition government supports mining and mineral processing as valid and valuable contributors to regional employment in particular and to the national economy in general. The government will continue to work with the mining industry to ensure a future in Australia.

Australia’s mining and mineral processing sectors have directly contributed more than $500 billion to Australia’s wealth over the past 20 years and are responsible for significant infrastructure development. Since 1967, the industry has built 26 towns, 12 ports and additional port bulk-handling infrastructure at many existing ports, 25 airfields and over 2,000 kilometres of railway line. Rather than put aside our enormous natural advantage in coal resources, the Australian government believe we should work on ways to reduce the greenhouse consequences of using them. To this end, we have so far invested $275 million in the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund in four projects. That represents an investment of around $1.75 billion in developing low-emission coal technologies. As a result of this investment, it is expected that clean coal power will start being fed into the electricity grid from the year 2009.

Labor plus the Greens equals a dangerous political equation in our parliaments and our economy. There should be no room in Australia for political deals with extremists who are soft on drugs. A Senate in which Labor and the Greens combined to have the majority would be a very dangerous thing for Australia.