Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, why you required me to sit down for that piece of political futility and stupidity I cannot imagine. I only respond to interjections made by Labor Party senators to highlight the fact that rural and regional Australia has done considerably worse since this government was introduced, and it is because there are very few members of the Labor Party from rural and regional Australia. I look around the other side of this chamber and I cannot see one senator who comes from rural and regional Australia. At the same time, I look around this side of the chamber and I see that 100 per cent of the senators are from rural and regional Australia. And while they are only small numbers, it really demonstrates that senators on this side understand, empathise with and live in rural and regional Australia, and we understand those problems.

Because this bill continues the work started by the Howard government, we as a coalition will be supporting it. I want to note that we are talking about a reform bill but referring to dangerous goods. I also want to highlight a transport matter that is of particular concern to the part of rural and regional Australia that I come from, and that is the main arterial road which connects Northern Queensland with the rest of Australia and crosses the Burdekin River between Ayr and Home Hill—as senators may know, I live in Ayr. There is a bridge there that was the state-of-the-art engineering construction in 1957 when that marvellous Queenslander, Vince Gair, a great Premier and a very significant senator in this chamber, opened it—