David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It's great that you get to acknowledge the great electorate of Maranoa, one that takes up 10 per cent of the Australian land mass, one that is proudly rural and regional. When you talk about the great investment that this government is making in rural and regional Australia, you are talking about the electorate of Maranoa, one of the big five electorates in land size and in output to this economy. It's great that you're able to finally acknowledge the great electorate of Maranoa and its people. I'm very grateful for that, Mr Deputy Speaker!

But I am proud to be part of a federal government that is acknowledging that rural and regional Australia is the economic engine room of this nation. The reality is that the government, for the first time, are taking real steps to decentralise our government but also then taking the first steps to encourage business to follow us as the leaders in moving out into rural and regional Australia. It is a good move to take those services that we, as a government, are meant to deliver to the people of people of rural and regional Australia. What a crazy idea to put it out where the people that you're meant to be serving are! What a crazy idea that would be! The Labor Party seem to think that that's a bizarre concept—that you would finally put resources and services that are there to service the people of rural and regional Australia in rural and regional Australia. That's what governments are here to do.

And I'm proud to say that Minister Nash has also taken to this in such a fervent way in making sure that she's now held all cabinet ministers to account in asking them to review their departments, to look at them in an intrinsic way for how they could better be decentralised, to put them and their services out into rural and regional Australia in a pragmatic and sensible way. We've also seen it from the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, with the APVMA, moving it to Armidale.

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