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

That is just one year, Senator Cormann. So, what can be done? First of all, the Senate today could vote to remove this job-destroying carbon tax to help our struggling airline sector. That would be a great first. But another thing Labor could do is ensure that the opposition has command of the facts. Yesterday a very senior opposition frontbencher—Mr O'Connor, no less—claimed that the government is the majority shareholder in Qantas. And he did not say it once, he did not say it twice, he said it three times—and of course he was wrong on each and every occasion. Labor's cure is a recipe for a government owned airline, forgetting it was Labor itself that sold Qantas over 20 years ago under the Hawke-Keating government. It now appears that Labor, having abandoned economic responsibility and common sense, is abandoning its own history. This is ignorance writ large. This is incompetence writ large. And this is Labor writ large: no idea, no clue, no remedies and suggesting things that are palpably untrue. I ask rhetorically: who would you— (Time expired)