1297 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Friday 27 May 2011 __________ The Speaker (The Hon. Shelley Elizabeth Hancock) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. THE GREENS POLICIES Debate resumed from 6 May 2011. Mr JAMIE PARKER (Balmain) [10.00 a.m.]: I thank the Government for adjourning this debate until today to enable me to respond to the motion of the member for Murray-Darling. I begin by acknowledging the more than 500,000 New South Wales citizens who exercised their democratic rights by voting for The Greens at the State election, in particular the thousands of Greens voters in the seat of Murray-Darling. I note that The Greens vote in Murray-Darling more than doubled at the election, and I congratulate The Greens candidate Heidi Hendry on that result. I also congratulate my colleagues Jeremy Buckingham and Jan Barham from the regional Orange and Byron Bay councils respectively who have been elected to represent The Greens in this Parliament. I was genuinely surprised by the number of outright factual inaccuracies in the speeches in support of the motion by both the member for Murray-Darling and the member for Clarence. The motion asserts, without evidence, that The Greens policies "... are compromising the democratic rights of the citizens of New South Wales". In fact, the reverse is true. The Greens proposal for a bill of rights will protect democratic rights, not compromise them. The member for Murray-Darling attacked The Greens by saying we were "born and bred on Centrelink" and that we had no idea what it is like to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Let us check the facts on that. According to the last two election surveys undertaken by the Australian National University, Greens voters are more likely to be in paid work and have less free time than the voters of any other party. The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Murray-Darling will come to order. Mr JAMIE PARKER: The same surveys show that voters for The Nationals are the least likely to be in paid work. But unlike the member for Murray-Darling, I do not intend to imply that voters who are not in employment are layabouts or bludge on Centrelink. Both the member for Murray-Darling and the member for Clarence have made a number of clearly outrageous and erroneous claims about The Greens policy to support human rights. Let me now correct those false claims. The Greens do not support and have never supported terrorism. The Greens do not support and have never supported Hamas. The Greens do not seek and have never sought to seek the destruction of Israel. The Greens do not support the statements of Sheik Hilaly, many of which have been deeply offensive and directly opposed to The Greens policies and principles. Lee Rhiannon did not lie about attending a rally with Sheik Hilaly. That story was a deliberate distortion by the Australian—a paper that has openly called for the political destruction of The Greens—and it demonstrates regular political bias in the stories it prints about The Greens. Two of the founding principles of The Greens are commitment to non-violence and social justice. Consistent with those principles we have supported the non-violent means of pressuring the government of Israel to abide by international law and respect the human rights of the people of Palestine. The SPEAKER: Order! Members will come to order. The member for Balmain has the call. Mr JAMIE PARKER: I did not interrupt the debates of those opposite. We also call on the people of Palestine to abide by international law and to respect the human rights of the people of Israel. We have condemned all violence between the Israeli and Palestinian people. For taking this stand, The Greens have been called extremist and have been attacked by the Murdoch media in particular. Now similarly misleading claims are being made in Parliament. Interestingly, those who oppose our stand to uphold human rights have had a lot to say about The Greens but have had nothing to say about the plight of the Palestinian people. Finally, as a 1298 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 27 May 2011 councillor and former mayor I defend the right of councils such as Marrickville Council to make decisions about how and from whom it purchases goods and services. Many councillors have spoken in this House about buying locally, and I defend those decisions as to how councils spend their money. Local councils across New South Wales spend hundreds of millions of ratepayers' dollars purchasing goods and services. Ratepayers expect councils to be ethical in the way in which they spend money and it is entirely legitimate for councils to make decisions about their purchasing and investments based on giving effect to the principles of their communities. I oppose the motion moved by the member for Murray-Darling. He and the member for Clarence clearly have a lot of misconceptions about The Greens. But in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation I invite them to visit the Balmain electorate. I welcome them to do that in order to dispel some of their misconceptions and for them to see what issues our respective electorates have in common. I, too, would like to visit their electorates to establish how we can work together on cooperative issues. For example, I understand the member for Murray-Darling is a supporter of container deposit legislation. I am as well. I am sure there are many other areas in which we can work together in order to better understand one another's communities. I have no doubt that the things the communities we represent have in common are greater than the things on which they may disagree. I look forward to working closely and cooperatively with all members in order to advance the interests of members in my electorate, and to respect the diversity and different opinions of members in this House. Mr ANDREW FRASER (Coffs Harbour—The Assistant-Speaker) [10.08 p.m.]: In the 21 years that I have been a member in this place The Greens policies have restricted the democratic and freehold rights of farmers and people right across New South Wales. Anyone reading the article by Miranda Devine that appeared yesterday in the Daily Telegraph entitled "Battiness is off to a flying green start" would understand that fruit bat colonies in New South Wales and Australia are in plague proportions. All along the North Coast—from Kempsey, Bellingen, Grafton and all the way to the border—millions of bats are destroying crops and lifestyles. A couple of years ago a bat colony in Mackay's Road at Coffs Harbour was so bad an Aboriginal home for mistreated children had to be abandoned due to bat faeces. As Miranda Divine said in her article, bats carry lyssavirus, yet The Greens in that area are still protesting about them being shifted. The council has bowed to pressure from The Greens and now it will not shift those bats. I believe that bats pose a threat to our health. We have no real knowledge as to how lyssavirus is spread but it is believed to be spread by bites. At Naranga school bat faeces is to be found throughout the school—on playground equipment, in classrooms, on cars and in dwellings in that area—yet The Greens still maintain that the colony moved into that area only two or three years ago. Mr Jamie Parker: Talk to the council. Mr ANDREW FRASER: The member for Balmain said I should talk to the council. The mayor is always trying to engender support from the two Greens members on that council and, as such, he has agreed to their proposal. I refer to the policies adopted by the former Labor Government relating to the moratorium on Baradine forest and to the corridor strategy across regional New South Wales that was put in place in an attempt to secure Greens preferences. After I had visited the area and showed my colleagues photographs of wallabies and of vegetation they thought I was showing them photographs of the forest when in fact they were photographs of the national park. In November 2006 a fire started by lightning strike burnt out hundreds of thousands of hectares of Cyprus forest which destroyed the livelihoods of timber getters and almost destroyed the entire koala population. At the time I was in Narrabri and I asked a National Parks and Wildlife Service officer about the fire site. He did not know I was a member of Parliament. He said that burst koalas were everywhere and that they were rotting on the ground. The former Government sent Domain Trust representatives to inspect the area. They came back with a photograph of one koala and said they did not believe that the fire had affected the koala population. The former Government locked up the Baradine area and turned it into a bushfire zone. It locked up the red gums because of four Greens preferences. As the member for Murray-Darling will remember, Frank Sartor told us he was going to give us a lesson in politics. He said his Government needed Greens preferences, The Greens wanted a red gum national park and they were going to get one. Those are the types of policies that are imposed on us by Labor governments. Bob Brown and his mates hold the balance of power in Canberra. Their statements on climate change and other issues are nonsense. Climate change has been occurring since the world began.