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

I was working away in my office watching the in-house broadcast of these proceedings on the TV, as I always do, and I was occasioned to come down here by the ultimate hypocrisy of the Greens yet again. Here is Senator Bob Brown railing about the multinationals, the millionaires and the billionaires and how the Greens are opposed to them. I reflect on the flood levy tax, which the Greens supported quite vociferously, and wonder why then Senator Brown was not so concerned about the multinational billionaire companies. You will recall that with the flood levy, which the Greens supported, the only people who were taxed were individual Australians, not companies—not the big mining companies that earn so much money and send all the profits overseas, as we keep hearing Senator Brown talk about. When I asked Senator Brown during that debate why he was exempting those multinational billionaire companies, as he calls them—the companies that send all of Australia's profits overseas, as he says—from the flood levy but imposing that flood levy on ordinary Australians, did I get an answer from Senator Brown? Of course I did not, because it just demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Greens political party. I do not want a rerun of the flood levy tax debate, but I do want to ask Senator Brown again why it was that he was imposing a tax on the local butcher and baker but not imposing the same tax on Woolworths and Coles, who are the principal competitors of the local butcher and baker. Did I get an answer to that? Would I get an answer now perhaps, Senator Brown? Perhaps you will tell me why your party's hypocrisy knew no ends when it came to the flood levy tax. That was an important debate, as is the debate before us today.

What Senator Cormann has indicated on the bill and amendment is sensible and is the way I will vote when this bill comes to fruition, but I do want to know, on hearing all the pious words, all the anger and all the enthusiasm of Senator Brown about the billionaires who run the country, why he exempted those billionaires from the flood levy. Why did he make the local butcher and baker pay the flood levy tax but not Coles and Woolworths?