Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Lyons should have read it like he meant it. Their hearts are not in this motion. I'll tell you why their hearts are not in this motion: because they know, and the member for Lyons certainly knows, that Tasmanian infrastructure will now go lacking because of the Labor federal government.

I worked well with the Tasmanian Liberal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Michael Ferguson, to actually build things, to get on and do things, whether they were arterial roads, whether they were the Scottsdale dam in north-east Tasmania, which was started and finished in my time as Deputy Prime Minister because you can get on and build water infrastructure. Those opposite don't understand that concept. They don't get it. They don't want to do it.

The person who actually put this motion forward, the member for Moreton, the Brisbane based MP from Labor, tweeted on 1 November 2021:

My grandfather was a grader driver during the Great Depression. If a road hasn't had a grader on it since the Thirties why on earth would a responsible federal government make it a priority now while the population in the bush is decreasing?

That was from the person who put this motion forward. It says a lot about the fact that he doesn't have his heart in this motion. He had a full minute and five seconds to go in his five-minute contribution and still couldn't put the time into talking about what he supposedly believes in when it comes to infrastructure. Let me remind him of some of the comments that came in following that tweet.

As a rural bloke, this is the most short sighted and selfish stance I've heard. Essentially this doesn't affect me and I've seen some ppl relocate to the city, so let's keep the access roads, used by many, in a 3rd world condition."

Hit the bricks Graham

That was from mattwilson_77. There are others. Gray Connolly replied:

Is this honestly the ALP position? That if you live outside an urban area, you should just accept roads that are third world?

Let me tell you: not only are the roads atrocious due to recent weather events in regional Australia; they are dangerous. What does it take? Does it take a small vehicle, or indeed a heavy truck, to hit a pothole, veer off and kill somebody before somebody does something about an emergency fund for our rural roads?

As the member for Wide Bay reminded me only this morning, you're twice as likely to die on a regional road than you are on a metropolitan road, and yet the member for Moreton talks about more cycle paths in Canberra. Go figure. More cycle paths in Canberra! If you ever saw a pothole in Canberra, you would think the members representing the Canberra electorates would throw their hands up and think, 'This is the worst thing of all.' Cars in rural Australia at the moment are veering sideways—every which way—to avoid the very dangerous potholes that have been caused by recent weather events. As the minister for infrastructure, I put record funding into local roads and community infrastructure under Roads to Recovery, and it's incumbent upon this government to do something about the dreadful state of rural roads at the moment.

In his tweet the member for Moreton talked about the population in the bush decreasing. It's just not true. In fact, regional Australia grew by 832,000 people, increasing by 11 per cent, according to the stats available from Australian Bureau of Statistics data since the 2017 ERP. Regional cities were the growth area during COVID. You know that, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, and so do so many others. Apparently that's been lost on the member for Moreton.

Our regional electorates deserve funding. It's not about pork-barrelling. It's about them getting their fair share. It's about them getting the key infrastructure that they need, whether that's dams—I note that so much of the money has been pulled out of the dam water infrastructure that we had in there, and it's been put into such things as cycle paths in Canberra. This is a disgrace. Yes, sure, we need our public servants to have good facilities, amenities and infrastructure like everybody else, but not at the expense of regional, rural and remote people, who carried this nation during COVID-19.

Agriculture and resources carried this nation. When everybody else was pulling the doonas up over their heads and worrying about the pandemic, regional Australians were rolling up their sleeves and getting on with the job of carrying this nation, of shouldering the burden of responsibility to keep this nation's economy going. So for the member for Moreton to come in here and talk up infrastructure, when Labor is actually pulling back infrastructure and taking it away from the regional areas that protected and saved this nation during the pandemic, is, quite frankly, a disgrace. He should be ashamed of himself and so should Labor for ruining the bush during the budget.

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