Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It is with a heavy heart that I rise to make a contribution to this debate on Senator's Ludwig's motion to vary the hours and days of sitting and routine of business of the Senate, because in some way I feel dirtied and sullied by being dragged into this debate—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

and somehow complicit in being asked to endorse the government's breaking of an election promise. It is a question that comes to the credibility of this government. I note that Senator Conroy is in the chamber and interjecting. Whilst I will not respond directly to his interjections, I note that Senator Conroy is galvanising as much support as he can in his party to prevent Kevin Rudd from assuming the leadership once again. He is also trying to dump this dreadful policy, because there are many on the Labor side who realise the political damage that has been done to the Labor Party by the words of Ms Gillard—'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—and Mr Swan and other acolytes. That was a crystal clear, rock-solid promise, and we are being asked today to endorse the breaking of that promise by granting additional hours.

We know that many in the Labor Party do not want this to see the light of day, but we also know that the real power behind the Gillard throne is resident in the wedge at the end of the government side of the chamber, and that is Senator Bob Brown and his Greens party. If there ever was a credibility gulf amongst politicians and political parties, it is demonstrated every single day by the Greens party. We can talk about their openness and transparency requirements for donations. Whilst they rail against corporate donations, they have taken the single largest corporate donation in the history of politics in this country—$1.6 million from the founder of Wotif. Then, by some strange quirk of fate, some coincidence, Senator Bob Brown and his tribe have asked questions that are going to benefit that donor in his commercial operations. In any other forum, there would be questions about how such a coincidence arose, but not to the pious and sanctimonious Senator Brown, who says, 'I'm doing everything within the legitimacy of this parliament.'

This is the same party, might I add, that say they are out there looking after children and young people and speaking up for their interests and yet, when I introduced a private senator's bill to protect children overseas from predatory Australians who would seek to exploit them for child sex tourism offences, they voted against it. They voted against protecting children from predatory sexual tourists under Australian law. It makes you wonder where their moral compass is. As Senator Joyce said, this is the party that voted against an inquiry into the abusive rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl in Queensland. This is the party of hypocrisy, the party that says you should not be allowed to use plastic water bottles unless it is for a medical emergency, and yet their deputy leader has on her own website a picture of herself clutching a plastic water bottle as she strolls around some mountain bushland environment. This is the party of hypocrisy, where Senator Bob Brown exceeded the number of flights of both the former environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the shadow environment minister at the time, Peter Garrett, while travelling around the country and preaching to others that they should not be emitting these noxious fumes that are destroying the planet.

We have established beyond a shadow of a doubt—and I think the Australian people need to understand—just how dangerously hypocritical the Greens party is. What they say and what they do are two different things. What they say in public is to appease people and make them think they are protecting the environment, but what they do is that they are trying to shut down industrial Australia. They are trying to increase taxes. Unfortunately, they have an inordinate amount of power over a hapless, hopeless, rudderless government in Australia at the moment, and that is the Gillard government.

Frauds have been perpetuated on so many Australians with the misuse, abuse, waste and squandering of taxpayers' money. We have seen it with pink batts, with GROCERYchoice, with Fuelwatch and with a whole bunch of other schemes. Today it has been reported that regional rorts are going on, that two-thirds of the money has gone to Labor electorates and only one-third to other electorates in regional Australia—completely disproportionate. We know that the standards, scrutiny, accountability and ethics of the government and their alliance partners, the Greens, are at rock bottom, and that is why their vote is at rock bottom. That is why they are all scrambling around to get the numbers for Kevin Rudd to come back. I know there are those on that side of the chamber who are deeply concerned about that, because they possibly will lose their jobs. They will lose their frontbench jobs because they so brutally knifed Mr Rudd before the Australian people could do it. There will be a big reshuffle. There will be a grand realignment of the factional schemes. You may not see Senator Conroy and Senator Carr lining up on the same team anymore. But we will see a change of government and hopefully the restoration of some integrity to it. We need to get a bit of decency, honesty and transparency back in the public debate.

One of the areas that strikes me as extraordinary is that Senator Wong and others will stand up and talk about green jobs and the experience overseas. What I would like to do for the benefit of the Australian people and those listening to this broadcast is detail one of the experiences overseas of the great hope for Centre Left governments right around the world—and that is the American government, led by Barack Obama. Only this morning a commentator reported that $17.2 billion has been spent by the US government on creating green jobs. I wonder just how many jobs $17.2 billion could create under a Centre Left government. Remember: the dream that is being pitched to all Australians is that this carbon tax will not hurt our economy because it is going to create jobs. How many jobs did $17.2 billion create in America? Was it one million? Was it two million? Was it 500,000? Unfortunately, that was not the case. It created 3,545 jobs. If you quickly do the maths, it works out to be $4.853 million per job. This is the future that we are being sold. The Australian people are being peddled this nirvana. But the results are there. The examples are there.

If you look at Spain, you will see that it is virtually broke. It is suffering from this great European crisis where productivity is down, work ethic is down, government spending is up and money is being spent and wasted on these obscure green schemes that the Labor government has tried to impose upon us.