Glenn Lazarus (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Queensland has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, and yet the Abbott government has done absolutely nothing to address these issues.

We need infrastructure projects—improved roads, rail and public utilities. We need jobs, growth and economic expansion. We need increased tourism, regional development and consumer and business confidence. We need clean, local, reliable, renewable energy, more investment in clean energy and cuts to power bills.

But, despite this, what has the Abbott government given us? I have jotted down a few things. It has given us: the continued abuse of human rights by deliberately thwarting marriage equality in Australia; a cut in Australia's carbon emissions reduction target; a cut to Australia's renewable energy target, so that we are now the only country in the world to reduce an RET, and I think that is pretty embarrassing; a spend of $20 million on an advertising campaign to sell its free trade agreement with China, the signing of which allows companies that have a 15 per cent Chinese investor to import 100 per cent overseas workers, undermines Australians' safety and environmental standards and allows companies to sue the Australian government; luxury chopper rides to party fundraisers on the public purse; a dramatic increase in the cost of divorce for women across the country by increasing the cost of Family Court fees from $845 to $1,200; the establishment of a wind farm commissioner—because apparently wind turbines have been known to upset cows in some remote parts of Australia—even though coal seam gas mining is destroying land, farms, water and lives across rural and regional Queensland; cuts to the pension for low and middle income earners without giving them any time to plan or prepare for those cuts; cuts to arts funding by slashing the Australia Council's budget and setting up a 'George Brandis slush fund' for the minister's pet projects; the spending of millions on a widespread advertising campaign to sell their intergenerational report, which is discredited by the celebrity scientist who they paid to sell it; the failure to act on allegations of physical and sexual abuse of asylum seekers on Nauru, despite knowing about it for over a year; threats to sack 1,700 people from research jobs if the Senate did not pass their deregulation bill; multiple attempts to cut funding to the higher education sector and increase the cost of degrees for Australians; the defence of their decision to hold an International Women's Day lunch at a club that only accepts male members; attempts to bully the Human Rights Commission's president into quitting because she questioned the government's treatment of asylum seekers; the bungled tendering process for submarine building in Australia; the awarding of a knighthood to Prince Philip on Australia Day; the abolition of Australia's only National Water Commission, which was responsible for overseeing the management of water across the country; the disbanding of numerous key advisory bodies and councils across the country; cuts to the CSIRO's funding, resulting in mass job losses across the research sector; the statement that coal is good for humanity, made only because they donate large sums of money to the Liberal Party; the scuttling of a proposal from Indigenous leaders for constitutional recognition of first Australians; the gouging of millions of dollars from programs for first Australians across this country; and the statement, as to first Australians, that living in a remote community is 'a lifestyle choice'!

I could go on, but I have run out of time. What has the Abbott government done for Queensland and Australia? Absolutely nothing. All I can say is: bring on the next election. Queensland needs change.