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

I'm glad the member for Moreton is in the House to listen to my contribution because, there's the bloke, there's the member who, on 1 November 2021, said:

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?

No doubt your grandfather was a very good man, as you are, member for Moreton. I've been on trips with you. I have been on committee trips with you and I know you are a man of good heart and of good intention. When you wrote that tweet, you were wrong. I know the member for Forrest will back me up and the member for Herbert and anyone who's represented a regional electorate or peri-urban regional electorate will know that when you put bitumen on gravel, you add hope and prosperity to those regions, because it's the regions which are providing the food and fibre for all of Australia and many other countries besides. Indeed, it has a lot to do with the National Reconstruction Fund because, as Labor says, this will provide mostly jobs in the bush. I agree—that's what we want; that's what we need—but we're not going to get jobs in the bush when Labor come to this place and jack the energy prices up, sending them skyrocketing through the roof. We're not going to see manufacturers in regional Australia with the policies of those opposite, who have shown reckless abandon in the past when it comes to the regions.

This National Reconstruction Fund, I agree, was part of their policy platform prior to the election, and good on Labor for at least honouring one of the things that they said they were going to do. They didn't tell us that there was not going to be a $275 price cut in power bills. They didn't tell us that they were going to readjust people's superannuation or start to tinker with franking credits. Indeed, they did not tell us that, but they did tell us there was going to be a national reconstruction fund. This is the bill which puts that into the mechanics of the parliament. But is it good policy? Well, Labor comes to this argument, comes to this debate and comes to this motion making out as if there's been no construction happening in Australia at all, let alone in regional Australia, which actually showed the way during COVID. It was regional Australia.

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