Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was with some interest tonight that we heard the Leader of the Opposition’s reply to the budget. There are a couple of issues that need to be brought up, given that people spoke today on child-care facilities. We heard tonight about Mr Beazley’s child-care plan. He is going to put 260 child-care facilities in 150 electorates. I am trying to work that out. That is about one and two-thirds of a child-care centre per electorate. For the electorate I live in, Maranoa, I am trying to work out where he is going to put them—maybe one in Dalby and two-thirds of one in Longreach.

After giving some good advertising to The Nationals—and I acknowledge that The Nationals are the reason why a lot of money gets spent on infrastructure in this nation, and I proudly stand behind that and thank Mr Beazley for his endorsement of National Party efforts in that area—he made a very interesting statement about his telecommunications plan. It is apparent that Mr Beazley intends to spend the $757 million of the Broadband Connect program that The Nationals carved out as well as draw down the total trust fund of $2 billion which was put aside to protect future telecommunications. However, he never mentioned—and I find this perplexing—that he was not going to sell Telstra. He never mentioned that.