Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Happy birthday, Mr Deputy President. The issue of unilateral action is precisely this: the government knew it was possible because they wrote the act. The Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, wrote the act. So who is responsible for this? The Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. Here we go. It is just like Fantasia, this whole comic apparatus that is now our nation's government. I flew down here today—flying on Virgin, of course. Everybody got here. That is something that both the unions and management should realise: in the end, everybody actually arrived here. People can make their own arrangements if they have to, and they can make them despite both parties.

So we fly down here on Virgin, and there are all the Qantas planes parked up there, becoming new aviaries for swallows. You turn on the television and there is Kevin Rudd. I do not know precisely what he is doing, but he looks like he is having a jolly good time at a certain event in Western Australia. And we come in here and debate climate change. It is all just falling down around our ears. The whole thing is manifestly a metaphor for what this government is. They say, 'We didn't have warning; we didn't know what was going on.'

I was fascinated to read on Crikey—and that is one group of people who do not say very nice things about me—back on 20 October:

In an interview on ABC News 24 this morning the transport minister Anthony Albanese, agreed that the government could use its powers under the Fair Work Act to intervene and force a resolution of the differences between the parties if the national interest was affected.

So it is all there. Ten days ago they were talking about it. Then we see Mr Albanese on television like a rabbit in the spotlight. It is fascinating. He was 'ambushed'; he 'didn't know anything about it'. And then we hear from Qantas CEO Alan Joyce that they gave them three hours notice—three hours notice of a train wreck—but they forgot to tell the driver or the passengers. They just let it happen. Why? Because they are at CHOGM, dancing. There is a barbecue on. And the nation is coming to a grinding halt.

They say it is 'extreme action' to lock out pilots and to shut the show down. It may be, but isn't that the same extreme action you took when you shut down the live cattle trade? We woke up one day and, overnight, you had just shut the show down. Isn't this an action that you have participated in yourself—in fact, been the instigators of? So everything you say is confounded and wrong and confused and misled. Every piece of evidence points to the fact that you just did not have your fingers on the pulse.

This nation cannot go on like this. We just cannot keep going from one fiasco to the next while at the same time planning to change the temperature of the globe. Australia cannot go on like this, borrowing tens of billions of dollars. We are now $215 billion in gross debt. It is a possibility that we could go completely off the rails. What happens to the share price is really dangerous. We are not even on autopilot in this nation; we are in complete free fall. Who is in control over there? Who is running the show? Who is the minister? Who is competent? Which person is actually going to take responsibility for this? What do you think Alan Joyce has been doing down here? Do you think he likes the coffee over at Aussie's? He has been there every second day. For a while there I thought maybe he was related to me, because I keep bumping into him everywhere I go. Maybe he is just coming around here because he likes the smell of the carpet. Maybe he has nothing to do in his own office. He just likes coming down to Canberra to talk to people.

What more warning were you looking for? Maybe they wanted a telegram from the Queen, who was here the other day. Were you waiting for the archangel Gabriel to descend from heaven and say: 'I think we might have a problem here. The CEO of a major company has been saying, in his own words, that he might close the show down, that people may be put off from their jobs'? Then, when it happens, there is surprise and wonder—and, as always, complete and utter catastrophe by reason of your management. (Time expired)