Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Saturday, the people of New South Wales have a chance to stand up to the gutless Baird regime. Mike Baird has been gutless in standing up to his surfing buddy, Tony Abbott, and his gutting of New South Wales, which has stripped $220 million already from the Hunter and Central Coast hospitals—gone from 1 July last year. He has been gutless in standing up for the 27,000 pensioners in my area, who have already seen their pension and concessions cut under the Abbott-Baird party.

The impact of electricity privatisation will be devastating in my region. We will see it, and we have seen it already in Victoria under the Kennett regime, and we will see it under Mike Baird if he is returned to office. There are 1,000 Ausgrid workers who work at Wallsend, in my electorate, and at least 400 of their jobs will be under threat because they are in the backroom. These are 400 families who will suffer because of the privatisation from those opposite. God knows what will happen to the maintenance regime, which is so important to our electricity network. All of that is under threat because of their privatisation.

I say to those 1,000 workers at Wallsend: if you care about your jobs, if you care about a great electricity network, stand up and vote out Mike Baird. The beauty of Saturday is that, if you vote out Baird, you get to vote out Abbott, because, as sure as day follows night, if Mike Baird goes on Saturday Tony Abbott goes the week after, and we can enjoy what happens after that. So stand up for your region.

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