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

I'd like to, first of all, reach out and dedicate this speech to Brian Smith. Brian Smith, who is in the hardboard industry, was speaking to me on the weekend about how his life and the lives of the timber workers have been decimated by the excessive green form of belligerence of the Labor Party and their cohort. That is just one example of what they've done.

I'd also like to dedicate this to Alexandra Meggitt, who came to the building yesterday after walking hundreds of kilometres with her dog, Cliff, because of the blight which intermittent power is on regional Australia. It's decimating people's rights, tearing communities apart, putting one person against another and subsidising multibillionaires and overseas companies with capacity investment schemes which are so secret. They talk about how money is wasted here and money is wasted there, yet they funnel money to China, to Singapore and to Europe to underwrite these intermittent-power swindle factories so that they can come out to regional areas. The fruit of their labour is power that poor people in regional areas cannot afford.

In our area alone, I remember talking to one person, a lady—there was nothing wrong with her; she had no problems with drugs, no afflictions—who was about to start living in her car because she could not put up with the cost of living. She had no money. And the seed, the source of that, the No.1 issue, was power prices. Yet to assuage the God, to assuage the cults, they go forward and continue their relentless push to push up the price of power so more people in regional areas go into poverty.

I'll give you just one program. It was a program for roads in neglect in remote areas that people hadn't seen. We'd get a road that has never been dealt with and put some money there for some gravel and a bit of bitumen. But the first thing the Labor Party did was get rid of it.

We had dams. We had Hells Gate Dam. We had Urannah Dam. We had the Bowen pipeline. We had Emu Swamp, Wyangala and Dungowan. What was the first thing they did? They got rid of it. We had the Inland Rail, the corridor of commerce that was going to build the inland of Australia and help your carbon-emission reduction scheme to basically make this nation stronger. What was the first thing they did when they got there? They got rid of it.

They talk about health. We have hospitals where if the nurse falls over they've got to be taken to another hospital because there's no doctor in the hospital. In Muswellbrook, a Labor Party seat, they have no obstetrics. If you have a baby in Muswellbrook, you have to go to Newcastle because you cannot have a baby in Muswellbrook. This is what is happening under the Labor Party, the apparent party for all. What an absolute joke that is!

We've seen water buybacks. They've come into regional areas. Yes, I'll be quite frank. If you buy the water off a farmer, it's not a problem. I'll buy myself a flat on the Gold Coast—I don't know—and get out of the joint. But what about the hairdresser? What about the tyre business? What about the people who are left behind? What are you going to do for them? They just get left in a new form of economic destitution.

Look at what you have done to regional towns. You have been blind. Regional areas have the poorest people in Australia because they don't have the services. The member for Eden-Monaro said, 'I've lived in a town smaller than yours.' I don't think you've lived in a town smaller than Danglemah, because I don't think it's possible. My neighbour is not on the grid. There's no power. My neighbours are part Aboriginal. That's where I live. I actually live in these areas.

The policies that you support are pushing these people further and further into poverty, yet you sit there with this sort of smarmy thing. There's no better example than the member for McMahon. Every time the member for McMahon gets to that dispatch box, guess what happens for us? Our vote goes up. So I'll tell you what—if you truly want to understand regional Australia, how about you actually get one of your cabinet meetings and actually come out to regional Australia? Bring that fellow with you. Gosh, we want to meet him out there!

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