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

Well, that's exactly right! It is amazing how one day those opposite cast aspersions that apparently the whole National Party is a doormat and then we get accused of running the show. I wish they would make up their mind. I do not know if it is a compliment or an insult, but what is always very interesting is the Labor Party's position on endeavouring to cool the planet, cooling the planet single-handedly from a room in Canberra. This is done by the same people who apparently believe that the way to negotiate on the NBN is to put red underpants on your head, a la Senator Conroy. We always know that if you are starting negotiations it is the first thing that comes into a Labor Party member's mind—where are my grundies, how do I get them on my head, what colour are they?—because unless you do that it just makes no sense at all. We also know that if you treat people vaguely like potato serfs from tsarist Russia you get a lot further! These are the people who are apparently going to cool the planet, so that is what we have had lately, apart from the dismal polls this morning and I wonder, pray tell, how that could have happened and what could be happening now that no-one realises.

Could it possibly be that people's power bills are turning up and they are starting to see them go up not in increments of $10 or $20 but of hundreds of dollars? I say 'hundreds of dollars' because these lunatics think that they can single-handedly cool the planet by making people poorer. This is their mechanism to bring about the refreezing of the northern polar ice caps. They are going to refreeze the northern polar ice caps through moving street by street through the suburbs of Ipswich, Blacktown and Penrith. This is how they are going to do it: make everybody poorer, put it on their bill and somehow the world will get colder.

We all recognise that this works so well! A broad based consumption tax has an immense climatic effect! We can all remember at the time that the GST came in that it got immensely colder overnight. I remember it! You couldn't help yourself noticing that the GST came in and the place got colder—and of course this is what is going to happen with the broad-based consumption tax, which is the carbon tax, that we will note a difference in the climate. And maybe it is working because it is a bit chilly today! It got remarkably chilly once the Newspoll came out. But what is the purpose of making people poorer? Why is that the fundamental core belief now of the Australian Labor Party, the Australian Greens and the Independents? Why is it that the core policy that they will take to the Australian people at the next election is that they were successful in making you poorer, they were successful in bringing home a tax that is actually going to do nothing to the climate but is going to do everything to that spare cash that is so fundamentally important? And these are the same people with the economic management who are apparently going to cool the planet and one of them is the same one who is currently in excess of a quarter of a trillion dollars in gross debt and has forced debt through the previous debt ceiling—and they are on their way to the $300 billion debt ceiling. So the prognostications that I made a couple of years ago about us getting ourselves into a world of trouble are now being echoed by people such as David Murray, the head of the Future Fund, who has been kept there by the Australian Labor Party so they must believe in his economic credentials.

Why would David Murray mention Australia and Greece in the same interview on The 7.30 Report? That is a peculiar outcome. Could it possibly be that he thinks that your debt is out of control? Could it possibly be that the debt is out of control? How, we wonder, are you going to finance this debt? Where will the money come from? Could it possibly be that a broad based consumption tax, under the guise of a carbon tax for the purpose of cooling of the planet, might be one of the mechanisms which they are desperately looking at now to try to prop up the parlous state of our nation's finances?

I will tell you one thing: making people poorer is not the way to get votes. Making people poorer by connecting them to the Australian Taxation Office through the power points in their houses with a broad based consumption tax that will be delivered through everything they do in their lives—from boiling the billy to making a cup of tea, to putting on the electric blanket, to putting on the welder, to putting on the television—is not going to win you votes. All that is going to do is annoy people, and you are annoying them intensely. You are annoying them intensely with your choice of Speaker in the lower house, you are annoying them intensely with the carbon tax, and you are annoying them intensely with the debt—and it is reflected in your polls.