Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I respect that. I certainly think that you personally could deliver a pizza. I have no doubt about that, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are more capable perhaps than your colleague over there.

The Mobile Black Spot Program was going to be the great solver of communications in the bush. What we saw was nothing more than an exercise in pork-barrelling. The government came out with three criteria: rural and regional areas, mobile phone black spots and areas prone to natural disaster. When we look at areas that meet those criteria, what do we see? In McEwen, where we have three national highways, and 60 per cent of the electorate has been burnt out by fires in the last six years, we got one tower and one upgrade. But what about other areas? The now Deputy Prime Minister's area was pork-barrelled to the tune of 28. Go back and have a look at the stats on natural disasters in this area. They are very small. But here we have an electorate such as mine, which suffers every single year from bushfires, and floods chucked in there as well, and the government sits there and says, 'It doesn't qualify for the mobile phone black spot towers.'

We have seen 17,000 families now losing their family tax benefit A in McEwen, because this government—fair dinkum—could not hold a chook raffle in a pub. It is unbelievable that each and every day we come in here and we know that because of the incompetence of the government $43 million a day is being paid, in interest, on government debt that they doubled and they created in 2½ years. You can change the salesman, as they have done, but the policies are still as bad. (Time expired)

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