Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Ludwig—it was a term of affection. Of course, we have been stuck since then. We saw it again with the carbon tax. I am sure that the Prime Minister said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,' because that was popular and that was what people wanted to hear. But, with what they delivered, again, it is the Greens corner that seems to have this commonality. Every time the government stroll into the Greens corner, they suit their own purposes of staying in power but they lose sight of looking after Australians.

In this case, this place has been pretty good. I am very proud of how we have all dealt with this matter in a bipartisan way, given the challenges that face our First Australians. I am very proud of the way we have gone about doing that. But, as has been shown historically, inevitably behaviour will out. Today we are faced with something upon which we could have had a first-class solution that everybody agreed to. In fact, the committee made this recommendation:

The committee recommends that the Australian Government continue to consult with the relevant state and territory governments on the possibility of national legislation …

That recommendation is before us now. But this legislation is only enabling legislation. You may believe that this legislation will make some changes tomorrow. It will not. But the thing that saddens me most, and it is a great sadness—and we have all been dragged into this reluctantly, I suspect, including the minister—is that for the first time we are definitely using the interests of our First Australians as currency in some grubby trade-off. I think the Greens should come clean and tell us exactly what that trade-off is.