Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. One thing that Senator Cameron will get full points for—nearly 99½—is for failed persistence. You can be as persistent as you like—and, to use the words of the minister, just because—and, in fact, not just because; especially because—Senator Cameron says it, doesn't make it so.

So I've got to tell you, Senator Cameron: the challenge for you is to start thinking about all Australians. Senator Cameron should start thinking about their interests and put as much energy into supporting regional and rural Australia as the great people who create the wealth—the people who created the leather under his suit pants, and created his suit pants, his cotton shirt and his spectacles. All of that has come from primary production. If he took enough interest, he would have been talking on this National Broadband Network and all the work that we have done and the billions of dollars of investment that we have had in this country to try to bring people of rural and regional Australia up to a standard where they can at least compete with their businesses. We tried to get some of these good folk a bit of a tax cut today. That's been resisted. So it's time that they broaden their vocabulary and start to focus on some of the issues for rural and regional Australia and leave the minister alone.