Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure that I rise for this grievance debate. I want to start with a quote from the Labor candidate for my seat—and that's great; that's what I want. I want a Labor candidate against me at election, because we want to give the people a free run. She said, 'Labor has already made two significant local announcements in this campaign, which go ahead if an Albanese government is elected, regardless of the result in New England.' That sounds great. 'Labor has committed to the establishment of an urgent care clinic to relieve the pressure on Tamworth Hospital and $580,000 to establish more crisis accommodation for 52 families escaping domestic violence, including four staff to support these families through their crisis.' And there it is on the Labor Party paraphernalia.

Now we asked a question—or Senator McKenzie asked the question—because we're curious about this. We wondered what had happened to it. Senator Bridget McKenzie, a Victorian senator, asked, 'Can the department advise whether either the Investing in Our Communities Program or the Priority Community Infrastructure Program are delivering the government's election commitment to establish more crisis accommodation for 52 families escaping domestic violence in the New England electorate, costing $580,000?' As per the Labor flyer; as per the Labor announcement. 'Regardless of who won the election.'

The answer has come back. 'The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts has no record of any commitments to crisis accommodation projects being delivered by our department in the local government area within the New England region.' This is the Labor Party: completely and utterly unbelievable; completely untrustworthy; does not stick to its word. I don't know whether anyone's watching this—I don't know if you are because you can't get to sleep or whatever—but this commitment should be honoured. You can't make promises and just not honour them.

I want to go through a couple of others which are very important for my electorate. There's Dungowan dam. Mr Albanese used to always taunt us when the member for Riverina and I were in government that we hadn't built dams. We actually put a lot of money on the table for dams: Wyangala Dam, Dungowan dam, Hells Gate—

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