Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) | Hansard source

I would point out to Senator Thorpe that the Australian Greens aren't big at acknowledging things generally, especially when they get it wrong, including when former Senator Bob Brown, the grandfather of the Green movement, proposed to the Tasmanian community in 1981 that a coal-fired power station would be better than a hydro-dam—a little piece of history that I never want to be lost.

I want to spend today talking about how time in this parliament is a finite thing. No-one is a member or a senator for eternity, so making it count is incredibly important, which is why I'm so disappointed in my Tasmanian Labor colleagues, who refuse to do their jobs properly. I only have to think of a couple of examples.

I concur with the calls from Senator Chandler that it is a great shame for our state when it comes to things like funding for that disastrous, destructive Environmental Defenders Office, a group of people purporting to provide free legal advice on matters of the environment but who are simply activists who are seeking to destroy job-creating, economy-sustaining industries like our salmon industry in Tasmania—something the Greens are not big fans of. But I would have thought that my Labor counterparts from Tasmania would stand up for this industry and demand that the funding be taken away—$2½ million every year in perpetuity, whether they break the law or not.

Similarly, where are the Tasmanian Labor team when it comes to our GST fair share? Two hundred and forty million dollars which funds schools and hospitals is being taken away from our state because the government refused to exempt that stadium on Hobart's waterfront from GST calculations, while the Treasurer, Mr Chalmers—Dr Chalmers—is able to exempt the stadium at Logan in his electorate from the same calculations—one set of rules for them and another for us. It's a shame, and Tasmanian Labor senators should do their jobs.