George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin my speech, I want to make a few brief comments in relation to the previous speaker's speech. He talked about calls from government backbenchers for the government to prioritise Syrian Christians in the refugee intake we are bringing in from that humanitarian crisis. I proudly say that I am one of those who said that. It is unbelievable and just shows the height of political correctness and absolute stupidity, when everyone can see and acknowledge that the Christians in that area are one of the most persecuted groups—they have targets on their foreheads for ISIS to come in and kill them—and yet we cannot say we want to take Christians in to protect them here in Australia. That is absurd. That is political correctness gone mad. I am proud to say that I was one of those backbenchers saying to the government that we should focus on Syrian Christians.

What I want to talk about today is outside this bubble down here in Canberra, where we focus on internal politics perhaps too much. I want to talk about North Queensland. North Queenslanders are doing it very tough right now, and Labor's vote in this place last week to support extreme Green attacks, through the courts, on jobs and on North Queensland workers was just another slap in the face for us up there in the North. They voted against the government amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act which would have ended the extreme Green litigation against job-creating projects such as Adani's Carmichael mine project, which quite recently was delayed in the courts.

North Queenslanders work hard. They work in industries such as mining, mining servicing, farming, fishing and a range of manufacturing industries. We work hard for the money that we earn up there. The Greens have never really supported those people because of the industries they have worked in. Labor once did support those people, but now they have abandoned the workers that they once stood up for. They certainly have abandoned them when it comes to the Adani Carmichael mine, because when that mine gets approval—and I am sure that within the next month the mine itself will get another approval, along with the railway line and the Abbot Point expansion—it will then be subject to another two years worth of Green litigation. We had a bill here that would have dealt with that and would have ended Green litigation against that job-creating project. But the Labor Party voted against it, and they are going to vote it down in the Senate no doubt. They will side with the Greens, their mates there, to vote it down. That could potentially mean that that project will go begging. I do not think Adani will sit around for two years more while this project is delayed in the courts, when they need the coal exported out of this country by 2017. That will be thousands upon thousands of jobs that could have been created in Central and North Queensland, where we are reeling from the downturn in the Bowen Basin. We need an upswing, and the Galilee Basin was set to deliver that.

We have had Labor in this place defying other Labor leaders and former leaders around the country to blindly support a union-led campaign of lies about the job-creating China free trade agreement. I raise that point because Labor always say one thing about being for the workers, yet they come here and act against them. We saw that with the Adani project and we saw that also with the fact that, while they are out there saying foreigners should not take Australian jobs, they also have a policy to import 30,000 foreigners each year, or roughly that amount, with no labour market testing. That is what they want the refugee intake to go to. Labor in Queensland promised to end 100 per cent fly-in fly-out operations in Queensland within their first 100 days of government. It sounded great. Again, it was more Labor talk about supporting the workers. But 222 days later they have done nothing. They have had a review, but we are still waiting for fly-in fly-out to be banned. The Labor Party in reality do not protect workers anymore. They protect union corruption and union thuggery, and we have seen that through the royal commission. They have lost the support of ordinary workers and lifetime Labor supporters in my electorate of Dawson because they only represent themselves, and they stand for absolutely nothing.