Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

it certainly is—an impression on this project. Yet, miraculously, investors are going to come and they are going to pour their money—$43 billion—into this project without a business plan, without any prospect of a return, without any notion of what they going to get for it, and we have 10 per cent of Australia that is going to miss out. What is going to happen to them? Ten per cent of Australia—no doubt the regional areas—are going to miss out under the Rudd communications plan. We have all of these investors who are going to rush out and take the Prime Minister at his word that it is going to be a great success—build it and they will come. It is purely a fantasy. It is all about spin, it is all about media opportunity, it is not about good communications policy, it certainly is not about responsible budgeting. Again, it is another one of the financial outrages this government is perpetrating on the Australian people. We have a situation where the fortunes of Australia are slumping under this government. This government is turning surplus into deficit. It is turning opportunity into despair for our young people. It is denying our young people Youth Allowance. It is certainly a government that is going to go down in history as the government that killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

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