Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Is that policy enough for you? A no vote from the majority of the Senate, by the way—that is a policy if ever I saw one! And Senator Boswell, I should add: what a wonderful address he gave the chamber. He still has the passion. After 25 years in this chamber, he still has the passion, and this issue is one that raises the passion more than most. This is definitely an issue that goes to the top level. It ranks with native title and other very emotional issues.

But Senator McEwen and other previous speakers call our questions ‘furphies’. Yesterday she called our question on agriculture a ‘furphy’. That just shows that she has no concept and that the Labor Party has no concept at all of the knock-on effects of the emissions trading scheme on the rural sector. It is all there for them to see. The bells are ringing, the alarm bells are ringing: ‘Hello from earth, Senator Carr!’ The alarm bells are ringing with regard to the rural sector if the scheme goes through as it stands without an international agreement—is that policy enough for you? If the scheme goes through, dairy farmers will pay up to an extra $10,000 at the farm gate and that will break an already ailing dairy sector.

It is the same with the beef sector. Is it not enough today that BlueScope’s CEO rang the alarm bells? Isn’t it enough for you today that he said jobs will be lost? Where is your defence of the blue-collar workers? Senator Boswell was right: where is the defence of the blue-collar workers? To the credit of Jennie George, she has tried to alert those on the other side, but those on the other side are not interested in the blue-collar workers. They are not interested in the knock-on effects that the ETS scheme will have. They have got two interests in this. One is definitely the politics of it. They believe that maybe they can win an election on this. What they have missed, and you hear it from Penny Wong’s language—