Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last night we had 60 farmers in the chamber who'd travelled since 1 am the previous night. They came here and sat here and listened to a debate about having some of their concerns heard and some of the concerns of native landholders heard and all sorts of concerns heard about letting landholders have their say on a committee.

They don't want to stop these things. They want just terms on land ownership. They want us to underground transmission where we can, which is something that I know we have support for. We're talking about a new power system, but we're using an old transmission line. We're taking away their rights to their land. We're taking it all the time. We heard of 77,000 hectares of land being reclaimed—the size of Bahrain and the size of Singapore. But we couldn't get it to a vote. We couldn't get it quickly enough. They waited here and they stuck it out.

This will probably go down again tonight, but we'll bring it to a vote and we will bring it back. We will bring it back and we will bring it back until they are heard, because every day these people are suffering and every day their lands are being claimed, so we will keep going.

In the interests of time, I will finish up here and hand over to other friends. Senator Canavan wants to speak. But this will come back and this will come through eventually, and thank you for that.