Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was campaigning, there was nothing I heard about more commonly from Boothby residents than climate change and their distress at the lack of action on climate change. We are a wonderful electorate. We have beautiful beaches, we have wonderful rivers and environments in the middle, and we have our green, leafy hills. I'm really pleased to say that, as a result of our first budget, we are actually committing both to climate change action and to fixing our environments.

I'm really proud to say that Rewiring the Nation has been funded and we're looking forward in Boothby to having a community battery in Edwardstown, which will enable people who otherwise wouldn't be able to access renewable energy, the cheapest form of energy, to access it. That's people who might be in rental properties or in ground-floor flats or who just can't afford batteries or solar panels. We're also having some QRVs, some quick response vehicles, going to our wonderful Sturt Country Fire Service volunteers to enable them to continue their very valuable work during bushfire season, saving lives and properties. On top of that, we also have money going to urban catchments and rivers so that we can enjoy our beautiful environment in Boothby. I'm really proud of this budget. We're starting the work that should have happened a decade ago. (Time expired)

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No hope, no solutions—that's the summary of this week's budget: no hope, no solutions, no grand plan, no great vision, no statement of where we're going and no great vision to get behind. But there are also a number of great disappointments in the budget this week. The first great disappointment, unfortunately not a surprise, was the $9.6 billion ripped out of regional grant programs. That doesn't surprise us, and it's also an insult. The Labor party want to call Nationals MPs, of which I'm a very proud one, pork-barrellers. That's not an insult to me. That's not an insult to a Nationals MP; that is an insult to every community member of every regional community around this country, because what the Labor Party are saying is that those communities and those people are not worthy recipients of the infrastructure spending that we've been given, whether it be sporting upgrades, cultural upgrades, roads or bridges. We're not worthy because it's pork-barrelling. Mind you, it's not pork-barrelling, apparently, to give $2 billion to a rail project in Melbourne.

The other great disappointments that have been well mentioned include $275. It's not $275 down, Speaker. Do you know what it is? It's $1,000 up. That's what the commitment is. The promise was something different. There are higher mortgage payments. The theme was: no hope, no program. (Time expired)