Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I see there is a bunch of schoolchildren up there. God bless you, but this really is appalling. This is the chamber of legislation but, sadly, over the last few years, Mr Deputy President, the way that the conversations have been conducted in this chamber is becoming very, very embarrassing. I am not the first one to have a good stoush across the chamber, and I welcome the opportunity to have a blue across the chamber. I should not use the word 'blue', sorry, because one of the MPs on the other side might run off to the papers and say that I am threatening someone. From a knockabout point of view, when I talk about a blue I mean an argument.

As to Senator Joyce's contribution on the questions that were asked of Minister Ludwig about effects on farmers and agriculture of the carbon tax, God help me. You might be able to direct me outside, Senator Joyce, as to what the heck you were talking about. Let us have a fair dinkum conversation. It would be nice to have a political conversation about the future of this great country, where the next generation of kids are going to wallow in the wealth that is being created and not about the nonsense—the one-liners, the ridiculous, childish carry-on that we have seen from leaders in the parliament. I go back to the last election, in 2010, and I think that if you were a visitor to this great country and you clicked on the radio or turned on the TV and heard or saw Mr Abbott and his cohorts from the other side running around, spending six months of an election campaign talking about what they were not going to do—they were not going to have a mining tax, they were not going to let asylum seekers, they were going to turn boats back even if it meant sinking them—it was just a disgraceful conversation.

On a brighter note, let us talk about the Nationals. If they really want to have some conversation about what is best for Australian farmers, why is that we have found ourselves in this situation in 2012 after having bipartisan agreement in 2008—well, not quite bipartisan; we had half of the opposition—where the Liberals were supporting the government's move to deregulate the export wheat market? We had the Greens, who at that time supported the deregulation of the wheat export market. We had the Nationals, and they have never hidden their hatred for Western Australian farmers being able to—