Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know it is galling to you, but you should have been stronger in your caucus. You should have spoken up. You have really got yourself in a bind. What you have done is basically said that with a wink and a nod we can get this past Australian workers and the Australian people without them knowing. Well, they are going to find out today, and they are going to call you to account.

What we have here today is the turbocharging of foreign equity firms for the buyout of Australian firms to be broken up, and there does not seem to be much we are going to do about it. What we have here today is something that basically discriminates against the Australian investor for the overseas investor. What we have here today is a clear statement that if you want to get a tax break then the best place to be is not here. What we have here today is something that is being quietly moved through with bipartisan support—except for some—because it fits another agenda, which has nothing to do with capital gains tax. That agenda is one that you might be serving at the fork in the road slovenly diner. It is called currying favour. It is first on the menu. That is what is on the menu at the fork in the road diner today: currying favour with a certain group of people.

You are not going to get away with it. You are going to have to deal with it. You are going to have to think about it. The problem that I think we all have is the matter of how we actually get the Australian people to hear about this. It is a problem that Senator Murray has. There has not been a recognisable argument put up as to why this is a good thing. I have not heard one. One certainly has not been presented by the Labor Party.

I challenge the Labor Party. Today, in the reign of their new glorious leader, they have a chance to be relevant. Once more we give them a chance to be relevant. We give them a chance to be courageous. We give them a chance to stand up for the Australian worker and to stand up for the Australian investor. Today is their chance, if ever they have one, to look after the Australian investor, the Australian worker, the Australian company and the Australian ownership of Australia. Or they can roll over and be dispatched for what they are: irrelevant shadows. But all we will hear is more of this rhetorical nonsense about a fork in the road, new chapters and a bridge too far—a bridge to a farce; that is what it is. But what we get is the fork in the road diner, where the No. 1 item on the menu is currying favour.

Unfortunately, the people who will get the Christmas present are investors in Houston, investors in Paris, investors in Berlin and investors in Japan and Tokyo—not the people of Ipswich, not the people of Longreach and not the people of Parramatta. What you are doing today is rolling over. And then you are going to come in here with the theatrics and bang on about something else and think that the world is going to change and actually focus on you and take you as relevant. But it is not. It is going to take you as completely and utterly irrelevant. I challenge the Labor Party to make itself relevant today and not support schedule 4.