Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Very well; I apologise, Mr Speaker. However, the point I am making is that idle promises do not solve the problem for country people. This is a port that is responsible for 12 per cent of Australia’s exports by volume. A lot of that depends on coal, and if we are to accept what the member for Kingsford Smith says, that all future coalmines are finished, then tell me how we are going to open the Surat Basin, where there are six to nine coalmines. What about Mr Beattie’s train line from Gladstone to Toowoomba? What about its connection with the inland rail network? What about the general job profile of Central Queensland and the coalmines behind Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone? I am all in favour of projects like sequestration. I say that we should be responsible in other ways. We should be looking at reforestation and at many things. But this quick grab that is being promoted by the Labor Party is not going to work.

The other thing I want to talk about is the myth that floats around this place about the New South Wales state election, that somehow this was a defeat for the coalition. In technical terms it was, but I think the swing was 4.1 per cent against Labor. But, interestingly, if you look around New South Wales electorate by electorate, you see it was not IR that was the issue. In fact the greatest swings against Labor were in the Hunter Valley, and the Labor member for Tweed, who based nearly his whole campaign on IR, lost his seat to the National Party. Interesting stuff, isn’t it? I suspect they will run the same campaign in Gladstone at the end of this year, and I predict that the ALP will come a cropper.

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