Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

At the moment, the people in my electorate are under attack. They're not under attack from flood or drought or pestilence. They're under attack from the elected government of this country. At the moment, they are dealing with issues like losing 450 gigalitres of productive water—the very lifeblood that employs people and provides prosperity and the very reason these communities are there. They are also now faced with a tax where the farmers have to actually pay their competitors for the goods that are coming into the country to compete with their own products. It's one of the most bizarre policies I have ever seen in this place. And, on top of that, they've got to pay thousands of dollars more for their tools of trade—their utes and their cars—that are necessary just to go about their daily lives.

So I ask the question: what have the people of the Parkes electorate ever done for you? I'll tell you what they've done. They've kept the lights on with the coal they provide. They've provided food, clothing and mineral wealth. During the pandemic, the balance of payment came from regional Australia. These people are the salt of the earth. The Indigenous communities, the rural towns, the farmers and the miners—the very people that keep the wheels of this economy going—at the moment are under a scurrilous attack from a city based government that does not care about them.

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