Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

We are discussing whether or not there ought to be a suspension of standing orders in relation to this issue. The simple fact is that Senator Colbeck did have a motion earlier this week relating to payment, as I understand it, going from Commonwealth coffers to contractors rather than to Forestry Tasmania. That was a matter of urgency. Can the Greens explain why it is a matter of urgency to try to ram a motion through this place which will do nothing for the forest industry, only condemn the coalition? That is all that the Greens motion says. Even your most ardent supporters back in Tasmania would say, 'This is taking it too far.' It is, yet again, Senators Brown and Milne overreaching in circumstances where they have sullied themselves with a $1.6 million donation—the biggest donation ever in Australian political history. They have become soiled and involved in what is occurring in the Tasmanian forest industry.

Apart from the Greens' acceptance of that donation, which has sullied them and leaves them without clean hands, there are other issues at stake. We do not want this money spent in Tasmania, because the timber industry does not want this money being spent for what would be, in effect, their own funeral. It would be their funeral because they have been killed by the policies of the Greens-Labor governments in Hobart and Canberra. The people in Tasmania want our environmentally sustainable, jobs-rich, wealth-creating industry to continue.