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

Let me just clarify a couple of things. Senator Cameron suggested that the Labor Party won the election. It is on the record that the Labor Party is sitting in government, but if the people had their will, if the people had their say, things might be different. The people of Lyne and the people of New England make up the two most conservative seats in Australia, with a Labor Party vote of eight per cent in New England and 13 per cent in Lyne. New England has had one Labor member, in 1913. If those members had voted the way their electors wanted and the way those electors will in the next election, we would be sitting over there and you would be sitting over here.

That is not going to happen. We live by a system; I recognise the system. They made the decision against the will of the people. I accept that and all you can do is suck it in and take it. But let us put it on the record that an electorate with an eight per cent Labor vote voted for the Labor government: Mr Windsor put a Labor government in with a vote for the Labor Party in his electorate of eight per cent. Mr Oakeshott with a vote of 13 per cent for Labor in his electorate voted for a Labor-Green government. Let us put that on the record first.

I opened this debate many years ago. Some things have changed and some things remain the same. I remember when I asked a question, Senator Wong lectured me that we were in the middle of a drought and she had to do this for farmers. The farmers would respond and thank them. Things have changed. Dams were then at 17 per cent; they are now at 97 per cent full. The Murray is flowing. It has rained. Australia is harvesting its biggest wheat crop ever.

The thing that has changed is that the Greens have formed an alliance with the government. Whether it is an alliance, a coalition or an agreement, in this nation the de facto deputy prime minister is now Bob Brown. Bob Brown is the deputy prime minister of this country.