Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (16:40): It is quite clear what is happening here. What is happening is that the Labor Party are clearing the decks for an election. It is the most bumbling process that one would ever see. It is an approach that General Braxton Bragg would be very proud of. The only man who could turn a tactical victory into a strategic defeat was Braxton Bragg, and now there is also the Australian Labor Party. We have seen them fumble along and tumble along. They started with an ETS; then they decided not to have an ETS. They started with Prime Minister Rudd, and they decided not to have Prime Minister Rudd. Then they stated there would not be a carbon tax, and then there was a carbon tax. Then they said the carbon tax would never change, and now it is going to change. Then they said they would never have a Pacific solution for immigration, and now there is a Pacific solution for immigration. We know what they are doing, but it is just such a rolling fiasco. They said they were going to have a surplus, yet we currently have about $244 billion in gross debt and we have borrowed in excess of $10 billion since the start of the financial year on top of that. It is just absurd. Everything they do has become a total absurdity. Now they have a price on carbon because they believe that Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Swan can change the climate. I will believe it when I see it. Their price on carbon will have as much chance of changing the climate as a price on sadness would have of changing tears or a price on sickness would have of making the world healthy. It does nothing. The ingenuity of man is the process that is going to take things ahead, and it is not done by tax. The only thing a tax inspires is tax evasion. The only thing this tax inspires is the absolute resentment of the Australian people. They have picked up on that, but why do we have to wait till 1 July 2015? If we are going to have to buy this dud product, why wait till then? If you are forcing us to buy this dud product, why not just drop the price now? What is this interim period all about? What is the purpose of an artificially high price right now? I do not like the price at all and I want to get rid of the whole lot, but what is the point? If you are going to afflict us with this insanity, can't you just afflict us with a cheaper priced insanity sooner? Why do we have to wait till 2015? You have already acknowledged by your own actions that it is absurd, so why not just go to the lesser absurdity now rather than leave us with the greater absurdity for that period of time? It is interesting. Remember, once upon a time brown coal was an evil rock. There was a naughty rock called brown coal. This naughty rock must be put outside and spanked. Naughty, bad rock! Of course, it was always peculiar, because if the rock passed across water and went to another country it became a righteous rock. Then it was righteous brown coal. It was naughty in Australia but righteous once it passed over water and went overseas. But now it has become righteous back in Australia again. Now it is righteous coal again and it can continue to be used in the Hazelwood Power Station. The correct decision in the first instance was to keep the power station running and provide cheap power to the people—one of the fundamental things to provide the basics of life. That is what a government is supposed to do. But it is just another one of these absurd backflips. There is no meaning to what they do. So how do they try to cover it up? Obviously now we have all this conjecture within the Labor Party, because with the Labor Left it is like The Silence of the Lambs. It is the silence of the Labor Left. They are so torn apart by their position. Now they do not believe in refugees; they believe in banging them up wherever—Nauru. They are trying to make themselves philosophically pure again, so today we had this absurdity: all of a sudden a fishing boat has become the mechanism of assuaging their guilt. They have now manifestly encompassed in a fishing boat the path to left righteousness. Correct me if I am wrong, but it was only days ago that the same crowd was absolutely pillorying me because of sovereign risk and populism. I was accused of inciting the demons of sovereign risk and populism. I heard Dr Craig Emerson in op-ed after op-ed in the Australian saying what a terrible person I was. I was beginning to agree with him; maybe I am. But today out of nowhere comes a statement that is an absolute affront to sovereign risk. This time they have actually bought the boat. It is sitting up at Brisbane, I think. No, it is not; it is sitting at Whyalla in South Australia. Senator Farrell: It's in Port Lincoln. Senator JOYCE: Port Lincoln. That is where it is; thank you very much. And why did they change it? Because it was popular. All I am waiting for is the apology, because otherwise you are total and utter hypocrites. It is all part of this chaos. There is not a tenet of consistency. Nobody can believe a thing you say anymore. Everything you say is absurdity backed up to absurdity—absurdity but with an austere, sincere face at the press conference. If you want real sincerity, go out in duplicate so we can have Minister Burke and Minister Ludwig standing side by side, looking doubly ridiculous as they try to convince us that everything they espoused not a year ago, not a month ago but a week ago about me is apparently now virtuous. Okay—stick to your guns! So what are they doing? They are clearing the decks for an election. They are clearing the decks and doing it in the most bumbling, stumbling, hopeless, ridiculous way. Senator Bushby: Is that a surprise? Senator JOYCE: No, it is not a surprise. And of course there is always a report card coming out, and it is called the debt. Every time you want to know where this circus is off to, you just go to the Australian Office of Financial Management—AOFM for all the good people listening; google it—and look at our debt. And you can track your debt. You can watch it grow. It is like one of those magic monkeys you used to buy from the cartoon characters: just add water and watch the debt grow! This is the crowd that is apparently at the tiller of our nation. This is the crowd that, if you believe them—if you look up at the vault of heaven—are the ones who can cool the planet. They are going to be part of it. Even Senator Faulkner, who I believe is consistent but has just been a bit cowardly lately because he has not stood up for what he believed in, talks about: 'Other countries are going down this thing or they are "developing" a program. They are thinking about it.' That is what you have to worry about. They are thinking about doing something and, because someone is thinking about it, we must do it. He compared us to China. Well and good, and very clever they are. I have no problems with them being clever; I have a big problem with us being stupid. They are going to get carbon credits. They are going to get a whole heap of dirty little coalfired power stations, turn them into a big new coalfired power station and collect the carbon credits, and who will send the carbon credits? We will; we will send them the carbon credits. But we do not have any money, so where are we going to get the money from? We will borrow it. And who will we borrow the money off? We will borrow the money off them. Economics like that could only ever make sense in the Australian Labor Party, and it is probably because none of them have ever really run anything, or had a job. I take that back: they have all had a job, but they have never run a business. This is part of where we are off to in this insane world. What will this world look like if they stay there? What on earth will Australia look like if this crowd stays there? Their own people cannot believe them. They have walked all over the left; to the right they look absolutely absurd. The NBN is another complete absurdity. The only thing we can do to fix it is get rid of them.