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

I rise tonight to talk about two things. The population of Australia, in the budget papers, looked like it would increase by about 525,000 people. That's a lot of people. It's more than live in this city, the capital of Australia. But the national accounts have come out, and we have done better; we're over 100,000 above that. It's about 625,000 people, and that's pretty remarkable for a year. But the problem is: where are these people going to live and what are they going to live in and what's happening to our rental prices? When we look at the housing legislation, it's not even going to touch the sides of what is required. What is pertinent to this is that in Sydney there is a real dislike of the city getting any bigger, as there is in Melbourne, the Gold Coast and, now, Brisbane. They're basically saying that the place is full. They don't want more people. They don't want a big Australia.

But there are parts of Australia that will accept a growing population, and they are in regional areas. But they won't accept it if you keep ripping the funding out of these areas, especially for infrastructure. Not out of exclusiveness—it could be Wagga Wagga as well—let's look at New England. For the city of Tamworth to grow—we're now at about 70,000 people—we need more water infrastructure. So we fought for a dam, Dungowan Dam. The first thing that happened when the new government came in was that they got rid of the money for Dungowan Dam. But the people are still pouring in. They're pouring in from Sydney. New suburbs are opening up all the time. As soon as a block goes in it's filled out. Even areas that used to be other towns are now suburbs, such at Kootingal.

We had so much work to do on the New England Highway. Now it's all under review. Why? What more needs to be reviewed about the Tenterfield bypass, the straightening of the road at Wingen or the Calala Lane to Greg Norman Drive duplication? What needs to be reviewed? The traffic is there. It's flat out. We've just got to get on and do these things.

The big one for regional Australia—the big one which connects Gladstone to Melbourne through all our seats: Riverina, Parkes, New England—is Inland Rail. It has been kicked into the long grass. I know people who are being retrenched. The whole thing is going to be mothballed, and this is so stupid because, if you want to make Australia stronger and you want to have new areas where people can live, you've got to get that vital infrastructure in place. Now, they came up with this fantastic number of $31 billion. No-one has ever actually told us how they came to that number. It's going to cost $31 billion. As an accountant or an auditor, if you can't stand behind your numbers, your numbers are rubbish. You've actually got to prove how you came to that number.

But if you want to do a comparative analysis, I can tell you a number they have proved, and that is what Snowy Hydro 2.0 is going to cost at the moment. It's $12 billion. It started at $2 billion. It went across to the expenditure review board at $2 billion. It's now up to $12 billion. And they're continuing that one. That one's going on. But not the Inland Rail.

They've now told the people at APVMA to work from home. Apparently, the way you fix the culture of the APVMA is to shut it down, to move it back to Canberra, to show no confidence whatsoever in regional Australia and to say to people, 'We would never even envisage any form of decentralisation to a regional city or a regional town.' How does that encourage people to do anything other than live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and now, to an extent, Canberra? You are feeding your problem. You are growing your problem, and every time you get onto a major road in Sydney, just be prepared for more cars and more people next year. They're just going to pack out that basin until you have a plan for them to live somewhere else.

I'll tell you what you have given New England, though. You've given us solar factories, wind factories and transmission lines—thank you very much for that!—which are completely dividing our communities. But there comes a time for pushback, and this is it. This is going to be the battleground. We're going to bring those people to Canberra. I've been speaking to them tonight. They're coming down here, ladies and gentlemen. They're coming to the front lawn and they're very, very, very unhappy.