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

It seems interesting that the Labor Party’s approach to the Senate now is to become mercenary, belligerent and arrogant. It has not taken very long for the Labor Party to change. It has not taken very long for them to put aside any desire for reasonable working hours, the said decency in working hours as put forward by Senator Brown. The Labor Party insist that they are going to try and pursue this case, even though they are getting thousands of emails telling them that the Australian people want this investigated.

The Australian people do want the appropriate policy response, but they do not acknowledge that the appropriate policy response is Minister Wong’s or Kevin Rudd’s appropriate policy response. In fact, that is not the only policy that is before us. We can look at a whole range of things, but the Labor Party, belligerent and arrogant as they have become, are going to try to bulldoze this through. They will vote for us to sit here forever because that is the new approach of the Labor Party. That is the type of party the Labor Party has become. And when they talk about a Faustian bargain, you sign a Faustian bargain as soon as you join the Labor Party because either you agree with them or you are kicked out. That is the only position they have in the Labor Party. Every time you sign up to the Australian Labor Party, you sell your soul.