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

I'll start with a three 'I's that I was talking to my colleagues about this morning, the three 'I's that will bring down the Labor government—they really will. The first one is intermittent power. Intermittent power underpins the cost-of-living crisis, with electricity prices going through the roof. Food prices and the grocery prices they're attached to are going through the roof. Manufacturing jobs—if the grand plan of the Labor Party was so evident, manufacturers such as Boeing, Rolls-Royce, BMW, Mitsubishi and Hitachi would say, 'This gentleman who sits over here, Mr Bowen, is a genius, and we should all get to Australia in a big hurry to be part of this new nirvana.' Of course, no-one wants to come here. In fact, they're all lined up to go.

Then, of course, there's immigration—I'll come back to that. The third 'I' is the incumbent. Tick-tock, tick-tock, we can hear the clock. We've got Cameron Milner winding it up, so it gets to the alarm clock even quicker. This man, Cameron Milner, is writing some marvellous pieces in the paper. I bet they're not solo efforts; I bet they're thought out in a tactics group. The Prime Minister is rattled. He's like a man who has dived out of a plane and the first parachute didn't work, and he's desperately searching for the second one. Today, the second parachute was the NBN sale. Where did this come from? Why don't we have a motion that we're not going to sell Uluru or the beaches? I don't know.

Back to immigration, because it underpins so much. We've seen from Abul Rizvi, who was the deputy secretary of the immigration department, that between 450,000 and 475,000 people are going to move to Australia, or have moved to Australia, in the 2023-24 year. That's twice the size of Hobart, the size of Canberra, six Tamworths or 1½ Geelongs. So it's not just the people. Where are the dams that will support these people? Where are the roads to support these people? Where are the schools that you would expect to find in two Hobarts or in a Canberra?

Look at what Canberra has: two universities, parks and houses. Have we built a Canberra in the last 12 months? Have we built the universities? This goes through to the hospitals, the TAFEs and the police. You're spreading the police so thin because you just haven't got the infrastructure there. The doctors—I know the member for Mallee understands medical issues so much, with her husband, Phil, who does a great job in that part of the world. This is all part and parcel of what we're getting with this chaotic approach. I truly believe that the three 'I's—intermittent power, immigration and the incumbent—are so detrimental to the current government. There is a gentleman on the other side, the Treasurer, and I don't think he's fully in support of the current incumbent. I think he's sitting out there, waiting in the wings.

To close on one final thing, in my area—as with the member for Riverina—we have the Ezidi community. Immigration doesn't mean no immigration; it means selective immigration. Recently, in Gaza, one lady—one young girl—was liberated. She had been abducted as a young girl 10 years ago in the war by ISIS, and she's appeared in Gaza. She has been a sex slave for over 10 years. We should be aware of this. These people need our help. I share this story just to give people an understanding. On the most serious note, one Ezidi lady and her child were taken to Syria by ISIS. The child wouldn't stop screaming because the child was hungry, and so was she. ISIS said to her, 'You must stop that child screaming.' She said: 'I can't. We're both hungry.' So they took the child from her. Later on, they gave her something to eat and then they asked her if she still felt hungry. She said, 'No, thank you.' They said, 'Well, you've just eaten your child.'

This is the barbarity of how the Ezidi people have been treated. As a compassionate nation, we must retain our capacity to let these people, as genuine refugees, come to this nation. I call for the government to clearly understand the plight of the Ezidi people.

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