Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been encouraged to speak on the adjournment debate tonight on some comments made by my Queensland Senate colleague Senator Jan McLucas, who represents the Labor Party and who sometimes is in Cairns. Senator McLucas made some disparaging comments about my representation of a part of Australia for which I have a great love and have been in for most of my life and for which I hold the shadow ministerial portfolio in the coalition opposition.

I do what I can for Northern Australia and North Queensland as a Queensland senator. I am finding increasingly that I have to do work in Cairns, because neither Senator McLucas nor Mr Jim Turnour bother themselves too much with the real issues in Cairns. In Cairns we have 17.5 per cent adult male unemployment, the highest in the nation. We have across the board 12 or 13 per cent unemployment—again, I regret to say, the highest in the nation. And what do you hear from either Senator McLucas or Mr Turnour about that? When the Labor government destroys the fishing-ship-building industry in Cairns, there was not a murmur from either of these two alleged great advocates for the Cairns region—not a murmur. The Labor government has moved the shipbuilding industry in Far North Queensland—which has been there for 30, 40, 50 or 60 years—down to the electorate of, I think, Nicola Roxon in the Melbourne area. What have these members representing the north done? There has not been a squeak from them. And Senator McLucas has the hide to come in and disparage the work that I try to do to help the people of Cairns.

I want to raise another issue. Yesterday Senator Xenophon voted with the Labor Party to defeat a disallowance motion that Senator Boswell and I had moved to try and help the people of Far North Queensland by overturning this decision by Mr Garrett to create a conservation zone without any consultation. We had a lot of concerns about the regulatory impact on the area. Senator Scullion did not get a chance to speak yesterday because the Labor Party and the Greens guillotined the debate and then made sure that we had two 10-minute votes during the limited time left. That meant that Senator Scullion could not get up and go through chapter and verse the regulations that he had concerns about—and he knows quite a bit about them—and that we were trying to convince Senator Xenophon needed addressing.

But Senator Xenophon voted with the government and then sat down. As an afterthought, he got up again and said, ‘Oh, I forgot to say that I’ve done this because the government has given me undertakings to get up tomorrow in the Senate and make a statement addressing all of the issues that Senator Scullion, Senator Boswell and Senator Macdonald have raised with me about this particular conservation zone.’ So I have waited all day for the ministerial statement; I have waited all day for the relevant minister to come in and complete his undertaking to Senator Xenophon and I assume—because Senator Xenophon mentioned it—to the Senate. I have waited and waited. And right at the death of the day, on the adjournment debate, we had a backbencher come in here and give some comments.

Unfortunately, because I as the mover of the motion was not even given the courtesy of being told that this matter would be mentioned, I was not down here to listen. I was working away in my office, heard Senator McLucas start and thought that I had better rush down, so I missed in my passage down here some of the things that she said. But I did hear her say a few things. One of our concerns was that there had been no consultation before the conservation zone was proclaimed. As I say, I was rushing down, so perhaps I did not hear a lot of it. But what I heard was mention of the consultation that has happened since the proclamation and—worse than that—the consultation that is going to happen next year in 2010. Our concern was that the proclamation of the conservation zone occurred without consultation. Mr Garrett woke up one morning, slapped on this proclamation and did not bother to consult anyone in Cairns. Perhaps Senator McLucas did give details of that as I was walking down here. But the consultations that I heard her mention—the consultations that she was rabbiting on about—were all post the proclamation.

What will the government do when Senator Xenophon in six months time finds out that, hang on, things are not quite as he was told they would be? He could go back and say, ‘Yes, but I have a comment in the chamber—in the parliament—from the government that this is what they are going to do.’ They will come back and say, ‘Where is this commitment from the government?’ No minister, no parliamentary secretary nor anyone in the executive of the government has given this undertaking; a backbencher has. When Senator Xenophon says to the government, ‘You promised me this,’ they will say: ‘I’m not sure that we did. Perhaps a backbench senator on an adjournment might have made some comments, but that does not bind the government. That is not a minister or a parliamentary secretary giving an undertaking.’

Perhaps Senator Xenophon has a watertight written undertaken from the minister. If that is the case, let us hope that Senator Xenophon and the Labor Party have a nice little relationship. The rest of us in the Senate who had a very high degree of interest in this whole process would have also appreciated some particular comments and some particular involvement in an issue that was determined yesterday on Senator Xenophon’s vote because he had been given certain—to us, secret—undertakings of what the government would and would not do.

If Senator Scullion had been aware of this debate tonight, he would have been here and would have been able to go through the things chapter and verse. It is not an area that I have put a lot of time into, but just opening up the regulations that apparently apply—and we are a bit confused about what applies and what does not—there is a regulation there that says that a person commits an offence if a person takes a fish in a Commonwealth reserve, the conservation zone, in contravention of a determination made by the director under subregulation 3. And subregulation 3 says that the director may determine in writing a whole host of things. So the director can sit in his office one day, pull out a bit of paper and write down that you cannot use scuba gear when fishing in the Coral Sea. He has put it in writing, so you cannot do it—that’s the law! This is what this government was doing yesterday.

I know that the Labor Party cannot manage the government. We have a debt of $315 billion and no indication of how it is going to be paid off. We have a Labor Party that cannot even control this chamber—cannot even get their business through this chamber. We have a Labor Party that do not know what they are doing with the emissions trading bill; a Labor Party that want us to debate a bill this week, which they are going to change before we vote on it—but they will not tell us what the changes are! They are completely hopeless. What was it that Senator Fielding said? That they couldn’t put a hole in a wet paper bag? I am sorry, I don’t think I got that right—but you know what I mean, Senator Fielding! The Labor Party simply cannot mange the economy. They cannot manage this chamber. They cannot manage important debates like the ETS. And you can be assured they will be unable to manage the conservation zone in the Coral Sea and the bioregional planning that the Howard government—(Time expired)