Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; you are most generous! He knows that the $80 billion that those from the opposition benches and the states now say is being removed from education and from health was never there. It was a mirage. He knows that the pension system, which has 4½ workers today paying tax to pay for each person on welfare, in 2050 will only have 2½ workers paying that welfare bill. He knows that that is unsustainable. He also well knows that the university system, the higher education system, relies so heavily on overseas students, full-fee-paying students, to pay their bills. He knows that we cannot afford for our universities to slip any further down the pecking order.

And do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? The public knows it too. While there have been complaints to my office about the budget—and I have been able to put a lot of people straight because there is a lot of scaremongering out there—it is remarkable the number of people who say to me: 'Look, I don't particularly like this; I don't particularly like that, but I know you blokes have got to do something. I know you've got to do something.' And I think that the Leader of the Opposition knows that as well.

I represent regional Australia. It is not all represented by National Party members, I must say. Let me tell you: the people of regional Australia and rural Australia know that, if the answer is Labor or Greens—guess what?—they asked the wrong question. It has always been the way and it will always be the way because the Labor Party in this place do not represent regional Australia. They do not understand regional Australia, and—guess what?—they do not particularly like regional Australia either.

That team on the other side were the people who delivered the live export disaster to Australian farmers. We are just recovering now, and there was great news from the Minister for Agriculture in this place today. They are the team that, while they talk about the smart country, do not understand that modern agribusiness relies on modern communications. In six years they did not contribute to one mobile phone tower in Australia. They are the team that took $2 billion away from the telecommunications fund when they arrived in government and sunk it into the NBN. And, when I say 'sunk it', I mean they sunk it. They paid out $7 billion, mostly in executive fees, to hook up about 200,000 people. But they took away that fund that was supposed to be set in perpetuity to fund the rollout in regional Australia of telecommunications in years to come.

And then of course today we heard the bleating on about the fuel tax. There are not any easy answers in the budget, and I am sure the smart members of the ALP know that a tax that is stalled and is stalled forever eventually becomes an irrelevant tax. I will have more to say about that fuel tax when that bill comes before the parliament because I have a lot of thoughts in that area. But their telling us that a one cent rise in petrol is a great worry to country citizens when from 1 July under their legislation we will see a 6½c rise in the price of transport fuels in regional Australia—that would really hurt—just means that they are speaking with no credibility at all. They do not represent regional Australia. This side of the parliament does.

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