Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is indeed a pleasure to stand and speak in response to the speakers that have gone beforehand on this matter of public interest—that is:

The failure of the Government to be accountable to the Australian people.

This MPI is not a witch-hunt for Senator Cash; it is about accountability. The government speakers have articulately spoken about issues of accountability. I want to take the point from the member of Oxley, who said no-one here had stood to offer any type of spirited defence of Senator Cash, the Minister for Jobs and Innovation. I will absolutely do that. I owe a great deal of thanks to Senator Cash. Within my electorate, I have no less than 11,000 road transport operators. Mr Deputy Speaker Hogan, you would remember not too long ago how the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, if it had come into effect, would have forced no less than 50,000 sole transport operators off the road. I have no idea what the reasons were or what the motivation was of those on the other side to take away the livelihood of those people. I have 11,000 road transport operators in my electorate alone. I live just outside a metropolitan area, which is Brisbane. The precincts they reside in are normally one-, two-, five- or 10-acre blocks, and so they have access to larger sheds and larger yards for their trucks. They tend to congregate there because the operators will be: sand and gravel as that's where the quarries are located, and they'll take product into the CBDs; road transport operators shifting livestock from reginal precincts to selling yards within my electorate, shifting cattle, horses and others; single operators picking up horticulture from the paddocks and taking them into markets. If they've got a couple of trucks, they'll be running to Sydney and Melbourne.

So 11,000 road transport operators in my electorate were going to be out of a job, they were going to be homeless. Their only single source of revenue is their truck. Those on the other side, through the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, put legislation before this House, under the guise of road safety—that the roads were going to be safer if we took 50,000 operators off the road. It was Senator Michaelia Cash, from the other place, who stood and fought the unions, who fought the legislation that came through—as we did in this House. We opposed it here. As a result, I stand here and say that she is doing an outstanding job in representing those 11,000 road transport operators in my electorate. She deserves to continue in that position; she has been outstanding in that position.

When it comes to accountability, at the next election the Australian public will have a very clear decision to make: accountable government or, in contrast, the Australian Labor Party. We have put on more than one million jobs since coming to office. One million jobs where we have taken people from the unemployment queues, from welfare and put them into work. Seventy-five per cent of those sit with the small business sector, a sector which we have supercharged by the instant asset write-off, our tax policy and our fiscal settings. We're getting it right. On the other side, think about when Labor were last in government. In the past year, we've put more than 420,000 jobs on. In contrast, when Labor were in government, have a guess how many jobs were created in their final 12-month period of office? Three hundred thousand? No. Two hundred thousand? No. Did they get to 100,000 jobs? Pathetically, no, they did not. They created 89,000 jobs, and, as the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation said earlier, no less than 15½ thousand small businesses went broke. There's your contrast; there's accountability to the Australian public. When a sensible coalition government is in place, the economy grows and fiscal prudency is seen to. When you're talking about accountability, when Labor are in office fewer jobs are created, government grows and taxes get higher. The Australian people have a very easy choice. (Time expired)

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