Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has never been so much of a joy to talk about regional Australia and the National Party as it is today. You'll see in the Hansard how many times the Labor Party have mentioned the National Party—because they obviously acknowledge the work we do and are fearful of the work we do. I commend the new National Party senator for Tasmania, Senator Martin, for the hard work he is doing.

Let us start. Who banned the live cattle trade? The Labor Party. Who's going to ban the live sheep trade? The Labor Party. Who fought against us on the decentralisation of things, such as the APVMA to Armidale? The Labor Party. Who's taking money out of our portfolio for building dams and driving investment? The Labor Party. Who had no money on the table for the Inland Rail in their last budget? The Labor Party. The member for Hunter, who stood up and proposed this MPI, was sitting down the back and has now left the chamber. He's not even here anymore; he doesn't believe in it. Where is the Labor Party's drought policy? I haven't seen it; it doesn't exist. What about mobile phones? How much did the Labor Party spend on mobile phones in their term? Nothing. They are absolutely hopeless. They will do nothing. Who's going to get rid of the Regional Investment Corporation we set up? The Labor Party.

The Labor Party have the temerity to come in here and say that they represent regional areas. When you listen to them closely, you don't hear one thing about regional Australia, just a grab bag of issues. Who decided to set up one of their regions as Parramatta? The Labor Party. Aren't they remarkable? Today they had the chance to come in here and say that the National Party did a great job on decentralisation. They should support it. They should say, 'We like the way the National Party is building dams, and we support them.' God knows how long we had to wait for them to come to the party on Rookwood Weir! They should support us on the Inland Rail and say where in their budget the money to build it is. They should support us on rolling out mobile phone towers, but they never do. They have no vision for regional Australia.

Now we have the drought. I would have thought that, in a time of drought, you would have had myriad questions about the premier issue in regional Australia. I would have thought you'd have the dignity and the decency, during question time, to be firing question after question to us about the drought—not one. This is all theatre. They don't have it. They don't care. Even whilst this MPI is going, the member for Hunter has gone. Even he doesn't think he belongs here. He doesn't even support you. Your own shadow minister for agriculture is not here. He doesn't even care. He has left. He's the most hopeless shadow agriculture minister we've ever had. He is a complete and utter joke. He can never get a question up in question time, and leaves during the MPI—and you stand there and say that you're representing regional Australia? It is a total absurdity.

I'll reflect on the drought. I hope that there is a bipartisan view on the drought. Fires, floods and cyclones are bipartisan issues, and so should drought be too. I commend the minister for his incredibly important changes to the farm household allowance. I want to make a couple of suggestions about things we could do, if we worked in a bipartisan way. The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has a huge resource in water, and we have a crisis—a national crisis. There should be the capacity for the Commonwealth Environmental Water holder to put water into irrigating fodder. If you want to be serious, you could actually work towards that. You could lobby for that. I'm absolutely stating: that is something that should be put on the agenda now, so we can start growing the lucerne that is needed. We need a huge amount of feed, and it is literally running out.

We have got to be able to make sure that we move the infrastructure projects forward that are required so that towns that are in the epicentre of the drought at least get the commercial benefit from the infrastructure projects, such as road projects, which would have to be done in any case. They could be moved forward and dealt with now.

I commend the Leader of the Opposition on something he suggested the other day, when he talked about the use of agronomists for the sowing down of country that is, in some instances, virtually sterilised. I'll close with this: guess what the rainfall for Tamworth has been this year? A bit over four inches. Guess what the rainfall has been for Riyadh in Saudi Arabia? Four inches.

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