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

Hasn't the Labor Party been a wonderful adornment of regional Australia? Especially in my electorate, New England. Since they've arrived there, they've come up with a fantastic excuse to kick the Inland Rail into the high grass! Basically, now, rather than one Inland Rail, we've got two Inland Rails. We've got one that goes from Melbourne to Parkes, and we've got another one that goes from Newcastle to North Star. The problem is that they've decided they don't want to go to Brisbane anymore and they don't want to go to Gladstone anymore. People are getting retrenched, people are getting laid off, and one of the great investment projects of Australia has hit the deck. After that, they took away the money for Dungowan Dam. They don't believe in building dams. All the dams—they've taken away all the money for all the dams. They don't believe in building them. Now they've turned up to Armadale and are talking about moving the APVMA back to Canberra. They just don't believe in decentralisation. They believe in the citadel of Canberra and that every asset from the taxpayer should reside here. But I'll tell you what they have given us: transmission lines. They have given us transmission lines. They've given us wind factories and solar factories littered all over the landscape. People's lives are being run over because the government are saying, 'A transmission line is going to go through the middle of your life, through the middle of your farm, and if you don't let it happen we're just going to compulsorily acquire it.' People are fed up with it. They're fed up with being kicked to pieces by this government.

The Prime Minister is going to Tamworth for the Bush Summit on 11 August. I suspect that a lot of people are really looking forward to him turning up because they've got a few things to say. They'll be polite, and they'll be law-abiding, but they'll also be furious. People are over being walked on. Everywhere you go, they just say, 'How does this happen to us? How does the government apparently have more rights over my life than I do? How can they just completely smash the value of my asset? Why is it that this landscape I live in is now littered—an industrial landscape, where a town such as Walcha will have more structures over 260 metres high all around it than the CBD of Sydney?' This is not what they were planning when they changed the government. What has happened to regional Australia is that they have been absolutely and utterly exploited and they have been treated as some bumpkins that can be bashed up. Prime Minister, you're going to have a very interesting time in Tamworth. I look forward to you arriving.