Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

They promised the inland rail. It sounds great. That is definitely coalition policy. We want the inland rail to go from Gladstone right down to Melbourne but then it comes down to reading the fine print at the bottom. It will be built—wait for it—by 2030. The reality is that there will be many people in this chamber not only who will not be in politics but whose mortal coil will have descended the pearly vale to the choir invisible by the time that railway line is built. These are the sorts of promises that you get from the Labor Party. We have an NBN that is the biggest infrastructure project so that you can download movies more quickly—that is not even costed. We have a promise for a railway line first promised in 1823 and a promise for another railway line that they are not going to build until 2030. These people have a job coming their way at a second-hand car dealership on the Parramatta Road. I can see it. Cash for clunkers—they have evolved into that game. These are the sorts of experiences that we are going to have in this term of the Labor government.

They also talked about building regional Australia. I have the greatest respect for the Governor-General, but I do have a sense that these are not her words—they might have been handed to her. They talked about developing a housing policy for regional Australia but then we have to read the fine print—it is only for cities of over 30,000 people. In Queensland there is not one city of 30,000 people off the coast. They were going to develop a regional housing program in one of their regional cities which was called the Gold Coast. Five hundred thousand people live in this regional town called the Gold Coast and Minister Burke said it was to help fly-in fly-out workers. Where were they flying in and flying out from?