Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The party is hypocritical, Senator Brandis. If you were serious about the Traveston Crossing Dam and about what is happening to Queensland beaches at this time, you would not as a party be preferencing the current Labor government—the people who want to build the Traveston Crossing Dam; the people who have failed to address the problem that Senator Brown so rightly brought to the notice of this chamber by raising this matter of public importance. He was quite right to do that, but then he turns around and gives preferences to a party which has facilitated this environmental disaster and which will build the Traveston Crossing Dam. I hope Senator Brown is going to get up later and tell me I am wrong, that they are not going to preference the Labor Party in those 12 crucial marginal seats. I hope he will say that they will be preferencing the party that has guaranteed to stop the Traveston Crossing Dam and that has done something about getting this disastrous mess on the Queensland beaches addressed. I hope Senator Brown will tell me that they have had a change of mind and will not worry about getting Labor Party preferences to support a defector in the electorate of Indooroopilly. I hope they will tell me I am wrong and that they are now not giving preferences to the Labor Party, the party that wants to build the Traveston Crossing Dam and that has not done enough on this disastrous environmental nightmare. I hope he will tell me that the Queensland Greens will now be preferencing a party that will not build the Traveston Crossing Dam and that will actually do something at the right time when environmental disasters come onto our shores.

This is an enormously serious problem: the ramifications of the ammonium nitrate in the ocean and the oil spill could have an impact on Queensland’s ecology, its environment, its water quality, its tourism industry and its fishing industry for many years to come. What has the state government done? A day and a half after the disaster occurred it was still fiddling around the edges. Thank heavens for Campbell Newman. Thank heavens for the volunteers who got out there to try to do something. But all brickbats to a state government that sat on its hands and did nothing—and I might include the federal government in this. Here we have a media release, issued a couple of minutes ago, saying they are going to send a minesweeper up there to find these containers. It was five days ago that they fell off. When you see me getting angry, Madam Acting Deputy President, I am angry at the delay. It took five days to send the minesweeper to look for those containers. It took two days for the Queensland government to do anything about this monumental environmental disaster heading our way—and Senator Brown and his party will preference them next Saturday and make sure they are returned so we can have a repeat of this in the future.

I want to thank Campbell Newman. I want to thank all those Brisbane City Council professional workers who are out there helping and have been available to help for five days. I want to thank those in the state EPA who, now that the Premier has woken up, are out there doing something. I also want to thank particularly all those hundreds of volunteers who have offered their assistance to address this problem. I just wish their enthusiasm and their commitment had been shared by their state government, because if it had been, at the right time, we might not be facing quite the same environmental problem we are facing now. (Time expired)