Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night during the adjournment debate the member for Oxley highlighted comments by the member for Moreton about last weekend’s Queensland state election result. In a remarkably accurate summation of the result, the member for Moreton went on ABC radio on Monday morning and said:

... the National Party should be really upset about their result. All they’ve done is win back a seat. They lost a half a dozen years ago, which they held for 60 years before that.

So it’s not much of a result for them and I think that one of the messages the National Party have got to get out of this election is to get the hell out of south-east Queensland.

The member for Moreton, who is also the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, went on to say:

The reality is there will never be a National Party Premier in Queensland ever again, and the result over the weekend showed that.

The member for Moreton is not much chop as a minister—who could forget last week’s TAFE colleges in Africa clanger?—but he is on the money when it comes to the National Party. You can only sell out your constituency so many times before it abandons you, and the National Party has sold out its constituency big time—time and time again.

No state has been more let down by the National Party than my home state of Queensland. Let us have a look at what they have been responsible for. The Nationals abandoned Queensland sugar growers in the US free trade negotiations, sold out rural and regional Queenslanders by rolling over on the sale of Telstra, approved the importation of whole peeled bananas from Vietnam in the wake of Cyclone Larry—a natural event that devastated the Queensland banana crop—and agreed to the sale of Medibank Private despite the opposition of Queensland policyholders.

Just this week it got worse. The government announced it had formally abandoned the commitment to introduce a mandatory code of conduct for the horticulture industry. This was no ordinary commitment. It was made during the 2004 election campaign by no less a figure than the member for Gwydir in his capacity as the Leader of the National Party. Queensland fruit and vegetable growers were entitled to rely on the word of the member for Gwydir when he said:

A re-elected Coalition Government will impose a mandatory Code of Conduct on the horticultural industry.

Fruit and vegetable growers were also entitled to rely on his word when he said the commitment would be honoured within 100 days of the government’s re-election.

Unfortunately for Queensland’s fruit and vegetable growers, ‘truth’ and ‘National Party election commitment’ are not synonyms. The fact is that Queensland fruit and vegetable growers have been dudded by the National Party. The man who made the promise, the member for Gwydir, did not bother seeing it through. The member for Wide Bay had carriage of the agriculture portfolio for the first seven months of the government, but he did not see it though either.

However, the current Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the member for Gippsland, takes the cake. This minister is so weak that he has let the Liberal Party take responsibility for the code out of his party’s hands—out of the National Party’s hands, out of the hands of the party that purports to stand up for the interests of farmers and people in rural and regional Australia. This week the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, the member for Groom, stepped in and he put the kybosh on a mandatory code, announcing, ‘The government’s undertaking as part of our 2004 election commitments was that we would introduce a voluntary code.’ A voluntary code indeed! Tell that to the member for Gwydir, who was up there talking about a mandatory code in 2004.

According to today’s Crikey newsletter, senior staffers for Liberal ministers are openly rubbishing the National Party pledge. Like Labor, the minister for industry and his Liberal colleagues know that National Party promises are worthless, and fruit and vegetable growers around the country are finding that out for themselves right now. It is no wonder that the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education said The Nationals are finished as a political force in Queensland.

What has surprised me is the meek response to the minister’s comments by National Party members and senators. The member for Dawson made a few remarks on the way into the building about how unhelpful she found the comments, but that was about it. Notably, the Leader of The Nationals has failed to defend his party. Not one of his colleagues, including the member for Dawson, has come into this place and defended The Nationals from the minister’s prediction that the party is over. And you would have to say that their silence speaks volumes. (Time expired)