Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026
Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (17:21): It's been explained to me procedurally why we're dealing with this a second time. It's too complicated. Let's be open about it.
I'm not capable of explaining to you why we're doing this discussion again, but we are doing it again. Government will oppose this amendment. We are committed as a government to supporting rebuilding Australia's electricity sector.
The concessional arrangement in schedule 3 recognises the value of that contribution and the necessity of rebuilding the moribund, underfunded, underinvested-in electricity system that this government inherited in 2022. While I'm on my feet, I want to say that what you say when you repeat Mr Joyce's slur— The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator O'Sullivan ): I remind you to go through the chair.
Senator AYRES: Not that you would say something like this, Chair, but if one were to say it, to repeat Mr Joyce's slur against thousands of decent, honest, hardworking, blue-collar Australians, like riggers, sparkies, concreters, metal fabricators and steelworkers, who are engaged in this work—oh, you don't like it, do you? The TEMPORARY CHAIR: Senator Roberts on a point of order.
Senator Roberts: Mr Joyce has never slurred workers. He's always tarnished the parasite— The TEMPORARY CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you need to raise your point of order, not just go into a debate. You'll have your opportunity to follow the minister after his contribution.
Then you can debate the minister. You need to raise a point of order. Senator Roberts: The minister is misrepresenting Mr Joyce.
The TEMPORARY CHAIR: That's not a point of order. Senator AYRES: It is a slur against decent Australians in every regional centre who work in that sector with the proud nation-building work of rebuilding our electricity sector. The sly, sneaky slur that Mr Joyce says in his hysterical, red faced, shameful attacks on decent blue collar Australians that Senator Whitten repeats in a lame, derivative way is completely beyond.
The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator O'Sullivan ): Minister, I'm going to ask you to withdraw, please. Senator AYRES: Withdraw all of it? Mr Joyce's behaviour is calculated to sow division in country communities—there's a lot of talk about the algorithm—to try and drive outrage.
It pours scorn on decent, honest Australians who have done more to rebuild Australia's electricity system than Mr Joyce or Senator Whitten or any of these characters will ever do. It is also a slur against the people in regional economies who will benefit—the workers in Gladstone, the workers in Newcastle, whose jobs depend upon not ideology and posts and memes and far-right bonkers nonsense on the internet but on real projects being brought forward that deliver electricity for real blue-collar jobs in real communities, not the online communities you lot exist in.
It is shameful. It is a slur. You ought to be held to account— The TEMPORARY CHAIR: Minister— Senator AYRES: Senator Whitten ought to be held to account.
Mr Joyce ought to be held to account. Denigrating ordinary Australians is no way to proceed if you want to appeal to ordinary Australians in the regions and outer suburbs. They don't like being bullied.
They don't like being denigrated. They don't like it when people direct hate towards them, and that is what that swindle factory's argument and all the nonsense that goes around it is all about—pouring scorn on ordinary Australians—and you ought to stop it. The TEMPORARY CHAIR: The question is that schedule 3 stand as printed.