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

Indeed I am, thank you. It is an absolute abomination that no National Party seat received a mobile black spot tower in the latest round, which was said to be an election commitment round. But it was not described as that. It was described as an 'improving mobile phone coverage' around. If it's securing better mobile coverage, some of that money, some of those towers, should have gone to National Party seats, because we hold the majority of the landmass in New South Wales. And thank goodness for that.

The member for Robertson comes to this place, with this private member's bill, talking about neglect. There was no neglect when the coalition was in power. There was $120 billion of infrastructure supporting 110,000 or so jobs. That is delivery. If we want to talk about delivery and we want to talk about New South Wales, let's talk about Rose Jackson, the New South Wales water spokesperson who, not that long ago, when asked if a future potential Labor government in New South Wales supported raising the Wyangala Dam wall, said, 'Never mind increasing the dam wall; let's just improve the roads out of Forbes so people can escape quicker.' That is disgraceful. That is disgusting to regional people who have been flooded out six times, at least, in the last 12 years. Here they were, knee-deep—in some places even higher—in floodwater, and you've got the person who will potentially be the minister looking after water and possibly even infrastructure in a future Minns Labor government—it'll be coerced by the Greens, of course, as Labor always are; they are always bedmates with the Greens—talking about making better escape routes, rather than raising a vital piece of water infrastructure. That's the Labor way. They don't care about regional areas. They don't care about infrastructure in country towns and country districts, which provide the food and fibre for this nation and will continue to do that despite what Labor may say or do.

So the best those voters in New South Wales—seeing that we're going to be spending a lot of time talking about it—can do is to re-elect a Liberal-Nationals government and get Sam Farraway continuing to create road infrastructure in New South Wales.

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