Senator JOYCE (Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (3:12 PM) —It is very interesting today—I have been trying to work out where Mr Rudd got this idea from. It has fascinated me to find out where Mr Rudd got this idea from. Now I have found it. I looked up ‘Hugo Chavez’ and I found that in Caracas in Venezuela on 27 February 2007 it was reported that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez signed a decree to nationalise the oil industry—the sixth-largest in the world. The decree allowed Venezuela’s state oil company to take a 60 per cent stake in the oil industry at the time. It seems surprising that the tax that will now be on Australian miners is 58 per cent. He is out by two per cent but he has arrived there. The article goes on to quote Chavez:

So well might you call your friends ‘comrade’, Senator Moore, because comrades they obviously are. This is the most bizarre piece of politics that has happened to Australia for so long—the nationalisation of the mining industry. That is exactly what you have done. You are taking 40 per cent of the profits, putting the corporate rate of tax on the remainder and you are absorbing 40 per cent of the losses. You have nationalised them to exactly the same extent—bar two per cent—that Hugo Chavez did in South America. Is that where our nation has now been delivered? It is not Henry’s view. This is something that comes from the peculiarity of the Labor Party.

So well may they call themselves ‘comrades’, because comrades they certainly are and that is exactly what we have here. Australia went down this path briefly—a bit of insanity back in 1949—when Labor decided to nationalise the banking industry, but we thought we had moved on from that. But the man who dwells at the philosophical brothel of ideas, our dear Prime Minister, had to try to endear himself back to the left wing after he completely deserted them over the ETS—after he left them behind. He tried to recant from it on The 7.30 Report last night but, because he had to try to endear himself back to the left wing, he came up with one of the nuttiest policies that this nation has ever seen. It is startling that I can read something about Hugo Chavez and see awful similarities to exactly where our nation has gone now.

They say that nothing is going to change. We have already heard Tom Albanese saying they are shutting down projects. In my state of Queensland, as we speak, they are reassessing projects. They are shutting down projects; people’s jobs are threatened. You have given up on the people of Dawson and you will lose the seat of Dawson. You have given up on the people of Flynn and you will lose the seat of Flynn. The fly-in, fly-out workers in Leichhardt are not going to vote for you. This is something that is absolutely peculiar.

Then we had one of the most pathetic performances I have ever seen by a minister in this chamber when Minister Kim Carr had to turn around on a question and on microphone say, ‘Has anybody got anything on that?’ For one of his answers, he had to turn around and ask, ‘Has anybody got anything on this?’ Why? It is because this policy has risen up from hell and it has arrived on their desks and there it is. They do not care. They are quite happy with this ad hoc approach.

They completely and utterly burn Minister Wong and they have treated her like an oily rag. Why? It was because it was convenient. At the philosophical brothel, the dispensation of virtues comes at random. As long as the price of popularity is right, you can do what you like. Now will come the reshuffle. Now we have the nationalisation of the mining industry—our major exporter. That you would take our nation to this position is perverse. If that is what we have to come in this nation under the guidance of the Labor Party, it is perverse. It will put up the price of bricks, it will put up the price of quarrying, it will put up the price of cement and it will be part and parcel of you driving our nation into the dirt.