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

What did they do? We set up the Regional Investment Corporation, a new regional based bank which the Labor Party are going to get rid of. We have put money on the table to build the inland rail. The Labor Party hasn't. The Labor Party doesn't believe in it. We have money on the table for dams. The Labor Party is going to take the money out. That's the difference. Everywhere they go, they are destroyers. They are the political Shiva of rural Australia. Every time they go somewhere, they are going there to destroy it. We believe in decentralisation. Does the member for Hunter, the shadow minister for agriculture, stand by the movement of APVMA to Armidale? He's silent now, isn't he? He will never actually go in to bat for regional Australia. Well, the Labor Party candidate in Armidale wants to know where you are. The Labor Party candidate in Armidale wants to know where you're going. He'd like you to go a long, long way away. That's where he'd like you to go, because you're not helping him when you arrive. Everywhere they go, they never stand up for regional Australia—never once. We always have to go back in to bat.

It's great to be sitting in the room today with the Prime Minister, with Major General Stephen Day, with the president of the NFF, Fiona Simson, and with the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, to try to make sure we take this step forward. Not once has the Labor Party gone to the dispatch box at question time and asked a question about drought. They don't do it, because the shadow minister for agriculture, the member for Hunter, is so politically impotent that he does not have the capacity to get a question through tactics. He can't get a question up at tactics time. Either they just don't care about agriculture or they don't care about him. I say it's both. They don't care about either.

So we have so much more to do, and we're going to make sure that we drive ahead. I am happy to say that, in my discussions with the Prime Minister this morning, there's a real motivation. We are going to make sure that the empathy stops and the action starts, starting right now. About now, or in a few minutes time, the Prime Minister will be doing a press conference, and I'm absolutely certain that he will be mentioning the further things we have to do to assist other areas, especially with what's happening with the adulteration in the strawberry industry and the disaster and hurt that has caused. That would be something you'd believe—

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