George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Bruce Highway upgrades are all up and down the coast, including stage 5 of the Townsville Ring Road; we've done stage 4 already. There is the Walkerston Bypass. I could be here for a long time. The Mackay Northern Access Upgrade—do the members opposite really want me to go on and on? I could. Do you know what? Some of these are the very infrastructure projects that they come in here and complain about. They say, 'Oh, there's too much going into coalition electorates.' Let me tell you: that's what good advocacy does. All of those people on the other side who complain that their electorates don't get much—when they're pointing the finger at the government there should be three or four pointing back at them. It is their failure as a good local member to go in and bang the doors of ministers' offices, bang the desks and demand for their electorates what their electorates deserve. If they don't do that, if they haven't braced the door of a minister's office since they've been here, then they are not decent local representatives. That is the fact. I can tell you, I did it under the Gillard era and the little sliver of Kevin Rudd that we got. I went to ministers, I wrote to ministers and I harangued ministers about getting local infrastructure. I say to those people who are complaining about what coalition electorates got to do the same thing, to be good local members.

It's government investment in local areas, particularly in regional areas, that drives job creation and business growth. It's also the fact that we have deployed a range of measures, from the proposed tax cuts, which have already been delivered, to the small-business instant asset write-off. They have actually caused Australia's economy to be in a very good place going into the economic headwinds we are probably about to go into with the coronavirus and the impact of the bushfires. Our AAA credit rating has been reaffirmed by three leading agencies, one of only 10 countries around the world, and yet the member who put this forward, the member for Brand, reckons that we're not supported adequately in terms of the economy. Employment actually grew by almost two per cent through the year to January 2020, almost double the OECD average. It compares to just 0.7 per cent when those guys were in office. But according to the member for Brand—no eyes and no ears, obviously—we're failing to adequately support the economy. The last three months of jobs data have beaten median market expectations, with around 80,000 jobs created. But apparently the economy is not prepared adequately. More people are in jobs, fewer people are on welfare—

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