Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

and we have seen 33 Federal Court challenges. Is that the number you just heard me say? Out of 5½ thousand projects under this great epidemic—this conspiracy of the Green-Left-John Howard alliance to ruin Australia—only 33 have gone to the Federal Court, and they have been against a total of 22 projects. That is 33 applications against 22 projects out of 5½ thousand projects—there is a clear crisis here. That is 0.4 per cent for those of you opposite who cannot count.

I will take you through the 33, because, after all, the government said: 'Stop everything, we're the champions of jobs. We're going to clean up this terrible scandal.' I do not know why they do not have a royal commission into it. They say four were discontinued or resolved with the consent of the parties. Okay, well there are still 29. They said six were legally successful, in the sense that the application received a judgement; all the others were unsuccessful. So in fact there have been six successful claims on 5½ thousand projects on a change introduced by John Howard in 2000—this is a crisis. You can see how this has made the otherwise very busy people stop their leaking and drop their pencils and everything else. In fact, in 15 years of this massive jobs crisis, which only Tony Abbott can save Australia from, there has been one project cancelled.

An opposition member: What?

What did you say? One project.

See this speech in context