THE Nationals Senator John Williams says it’s laughable for the “new” Greens party to want to engage with regional Australia, when their agenda had been to destroy it.
The retirement of long-serving Greens leader Bob Brown has seen the new leader, Senator Christine Milne, take the reins and Mr Williams was questioning the party’s newfound interest in regional
Australia.
Senator Williams, based in Inverell, said the Greens influenced the NSW Labor government to bring in legislation, such as the Native Vegetation Conservation Act and Threatened Species Conservation Act, that made life a misery for regional Australians and painted farmers as criminals.
“Ask the farming community how they feel about land being locked up for National Parks to allow vermin to spread uncontrolled, a build-up of fuel and resultant bushfires,” Senator Williams said.
He said the cattle industry suffered from the Greens’ platform to ban the live export of cattle.
Senator Williams said it was the same for the timber industry when it came to a halt and threw people out of work, causing great harm to country towns.
He said now the Greens wanted to end coal mining and had even blamed the industry for the catastrophic floods in Queensland.
Senator Williams said the Greens’ crowning achievement was to burden Australia with a job-destroying carbon tax that would impact most on regional Australia ... “including increasing truckies’ fuel tax by in excess of $500 million in 2014,” he said.