Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do note that the question from Senator Liddle was, how did the government allow this crisis to escalate? And we're exactly talking about how we got to that position. The actions, or the inactions, while Senator McKenzie was sitting on the frontbench of the last government is exactly how we got here. Rather than going around in trucks and pretending to be a truck driver, we are doing something about this industry, and we are putting through legislation to protect this industry at this critical time.

So I want to acknowledge the efforts of the Transport Workers' Union on this important issue. We must remember that it is the union movement that has always defended our sovereign fuel capacity in this nation. And we know it is the Australian Workers Union that has always come to this capital city to defend our local refineries, particularly the Lytton refinery. It took the AWU, back in 2020, coming to Canberra to save our Lytton refinery, which was going to shut under the Morrison government. Do you remember those guys? Yeah, we do. This is the same coalition that bowls into question time and tries to rewrite history about their legacy with our sovereign fuel capacity—which is ironic, given that Senator Cadell comes into this place and waxes lyrical, quoting Napolean.

These are the same characters who said nothing when six of our eight refineries closed in this country—six of our eight refineries, gone under the last coalition government—thousands of Australian jobs in industry gone under their watch. That is 75 per cent of our refineries shut under the coalition. Many of those opposite were sitting on the frontbench at that time, and they didn't say a word. They sat by and watched our refineries shut, one after the other: in Queensland, in Western Australia, in Victoria and in New South Wales—all of them gone, just like the car industry, gone under the coalition. This is a coalition who wants to talk a big game about sovereign capability in manufacturing and our critical industries, but their legacy was killing off our car industry and shutting our refineries.

Just yesterday the Nationals were in here talking down efforts to protect our smelters. They came into this place yesterday mocking the deal the government has done with the Queensland government to protect the Boyne aluminium smelter in Central Queensland. More than 3,000 jobs are sustained at that one smelter alone, and they couldn't care less. They mocked it. They mocked those jobs in Central Queensland. That's their legacy.