Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I enjoyed the minister's contribution. I also have to make the comment that he is the third minister for regional development in three months! So committed are they to regional development that they've had a rotating door of regional development ministers, because they can't make up their minds! While these parlour games have been going on, inequality in regional Australia is growing. Not only is inequality growing between the cities and the bush; it is growing within the bush as well. While health and life expectancy outcomes are going backward in regional Australia, while incomes are going backward in regional Australia and while education outcomes are going backward in regional Australia, we have members of the National Party and Liberal-Country Party members coming into this parliament and acting like Liberal lapdogs and voting in favour of every single Liberal Party proposal that holds a knife to the throats of the people that they are supposed to represent. Well, Labor doesn't believe that this is the right thing to do by people in regional Australia. We think that the current facade that is going on in the National Party room has to stop. It has to stop.

Before question time today we called on the Prime Minister to do the right thing. If the members of the National Party can't make up their minds about who is going to be the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia on Friday then the Prime Minister must step in and do something. We've got the deputy leader who says that 100 per cent of the members of the National Party caucus are behind the Deputy Prime Minister. Well, we know that is not true. We know that the Minister for Veterans' Affairs has the numbers, even though he doesn't have the ticker to do the right thing by his party and by the people of regional Australia. He's got the numbers, but he doesn't have the ticker. Perhaps the bulldog—the member for Flynn—is the guy who's going to push him off the line. Didn't he give a leadership-type performance during question time today!

The real tragedy of this is that the people of regional Australia cannot wait for the hapless lapdogs of the Liberal Party in the National Party room to make up their minds about the future direction of this country. Already there is $500 million—that's right: over half a billion dollars—worth of projects in regional Australia that have stalled because these jokers can't make up their minds and they're too distracted by the sorts of things that are going on—

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