Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prime Minister, North Queensland was promised $5,000 million in guaranteed loans, and $500 million for water. The Hell's Gate and Herbert dams, Galilee rail line, Queensland Nickel, phosphate canal and Hann Highway will produce, if Australian, $16,000 million a year, taxation for retirees, struggling young families, 150,000 jobs, but after three years, still not a cent of money has been committed. What now? Panicked, pre-election pork-barrelling?

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will call that a multiple choice question.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. He left out the Rookwood Weir site on the Fitzroy, which I visited recently with the member for Capricornia. I know the Deputy Prime Minister was there recently himself. The honourable member will obviously know very well that the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund legislation passed through all stages of this House today. That legislation is on its way to the Senate, where we expect it to receive the same level of support and become law, so that it will be operative by 1 July. The honourable member is inspired by the prospects in Northern Australia, particularly in water, and so are we. I would ask the minister for water resources to elaborate on the great opportunities to tap into that huge water resource in Northern Australia.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also thank the honourable member for his question. It gives me great pleasure to talk about how we are currently already under investigation with Nullinga Dam—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Making sure we investigate Nullinga Dam, making sure we get the Ord Stage 3 underway, making sure that we get Darwin water supplies underway. Those are not the only dams that we will be looking at; there are so many dams that are coming in. I know Urannah Dam is vitally important. We have Rookwood, we have Eden Bann and we have Nathan Dam. They are all incredibly important in Central Queensland. It is not just in Central Queensland; we are looking at other dams like Mole River, the Dungowan extension, right over to Wellington in Western Australia—

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Tassie!

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tasmania we have already started. We have $120 million worth of dams going on there. In the next couple of weeks, we will finish Chaffey Dam at Tamworth. We will finish Chaffey Dam. We started it in our term of government and we will finish it in our term of government. That is what happens when you have a coalition government that goes from merely dreaming about things to actually delivering on things. We are proud of the $5 billion that we are going to be spending to make sure that we drive that agenda forward for North Queensland, drive it forward for the Northern Territory and drive it forward for the north of Western Australia.

These are the things that we do on our side of the fence, because we never heard of Northern Australia under the Labor Party, the Greens and the Independents. It was virtually invisible under them. It took a coalition government to actually stand up and deliver for the north of Australia. That is why we put $100 million on the table—to start sealing your beef roads. As you know, member for Kennedy, we are doing that. In Roads to Recovery, we have further extensions there. These are the sorts of things that give Australia a sense of vision. These are the sorts of things that make the Australian people know that if they want to have a government that knows what it is doing, has a vision for the future and has a vision for Northern Australia, then it resides with the National Party and the Liberal Party.