Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) | Hansard source

As I said, there are thousands and thousands of jobs that Senator Watt tonight has officially said are all over. They are no more. Senator Watt says it is an election commitment that the Australian Labor Party are delivering on.

Isn't it interesting, though, that, even though it's an election commitment and they claim that they have the right to deliver on the end of this industry in Western Australia, they still don't have the guts to have it properly scrutinised by the Australian Senate? What we just hit at 10 o'clock was, of course, the end of the debate, and when we say 'the end of the debate' what we mean is that we've just hit a guillotine. Why have we hit a guillotine? Because the Australian Labor Party knows that this is not playing out well at the moment in Western Australia.

So they give you a choice. You can have some speeches in the second reading debate tonight and then we hit the guillotine and—guess what—it's all over. Why don't you have the guts to allow an actual committee stage on this bill tonight? What are you hiding from the people of, in particular, Western Australia? What is it that you don't want to tell them? That you don't have an evidence base in relation to the decision that you have just made? That you know that over 60,000 people have signed the Keep the Sheep petition to keep this industry going in Western Australia? You know that the people of Western Australia do not want this bill to go through tonight. But none of that matters to the Australian Labor Party.

The good news for voters is that this time next year—guess what—we will have gone to an election, and I can assure you that in Western Australia we will be making it very, very clear to people that they have a black and white decision to make. If you believe in Western Australia, in the farmers, in the shearers, in the truckies and in those people who wake up every single day and keep our state going, you get to vote for the coalition. It is as simple as that. It is a binary decision. Either you want to back Western Australia and vote for the coalition or—and the 'or' is Mr Albanese, the Australian Labor Party and all of those senators, including the Labor senators from Western Australia, and Labor members of the House of Representatives who have turned their backs on Western Australia.

Mr Albanese likes to tell people that he is a great friend of our state. Guess what, Mr Albanese: actions speak louder than words. It doesn't matter what Minister Watt said in his summing-up speech tonight. The fact of the matter is that that, with the support of the Australian Greens, this bill will shortly go through the Senate chamber, and it goes through the Senate chamber under a guillotine, because the Australian Labor Party, quite frankly, don't have the guts to answer questions on this bill. Why don't they want a committee stage? Perhaps if they had a committee stage they might actually be shown for what they are—a government that quite frankly puts the word 'transparency' to shame, despite what they said prior to the election.

What did Senator Birmingham say when we were once again in this situation a little while ago? What were we promised by Mr Albanese? What were we promised by Senator Wong? What were we promised by the Australian Labor Party? And of course, prior to the election, what did they promise Australians? Well, they promised Australians a lot, but one of the things they promised was greater accountability. And tonight, once again, those words promised prior to the election, 'greater accountability', are about to be trashed. That is a great shame. The only people tonight who are not going to benefit are the people of Western Australia. But a very clear decision can soon be made. A vote for Peter Dutton is a vote for the industry; a vote for Anthony Albanese is not.