Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw that. Senator Bob Brown is on the record about the agenda of the Greens. On 25 August 2008, he said:

The Greens are about re-creating Australia for the new century street by street, community by community, city by city.

The Greens want to transform Australia root and branch, not for the better but for the worse. Their goal stretches well beyond the introduction of a job-destroying economy-wide carbon tax that will push up prices and add further to the cost-of-living pressures under which Australian families are already struggling. Lindsay Tanner back in 2004 said:

We might have the Greens with the balance of power … and in order to form government Labor might have to do some of the mad things they want.

Let us have a look at some of those loony, loony policies.

In the economic policy from the Greens' radical agenda they talk about introducing road congestion taxes, means testing first homeowners grants, treating family trusts as companies and introducing death duties. In the energy sector they are opposed to the exploration, mining and export of uranium. They are opposed to the diesel fuel rebate. They are opposed to government funded research and development for geosequestration technology. They want to shut down existing coal mines and coal fired power stations. Imagine what the cost of this will be on ordinary Australians, who are already struggling to confront the increase in electricity prices that will be brought by a carbon tax. Imagine no new coal mines, no new coal fired power stations and no expansion of existing coal mines. It was interesting to hear Senator Abetz the other day say that Senator Bob Brown has become a convert. At the time of the Franklin dam he was happy to have a coal fired power station, but he has changed his mind since then.

Look at their other policies in the social and community area: legalising cannabis, supporting needle and syringe exchanges, banning junk food advertising, giving 16-year-olds the right to vote and changing the national flag. In education there is the classic: freezing private school funding. How can we get across Senator Rhiannon and her extreme BDS anti-Israel stance? There is their abolishing of private health insurance. The list goes on and on. (Time expired)