Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I take the interjection from the member for Grayndler, who is claiming that he built the Magna Carta. But the issue, of course, is one of water. The water licences for the member for Kennedy are overwhelmingly a state issue, especially on the Flinders. I note the concerns you have. We too are wanting to develop the north and to build more water infrastructure. It is vitally important, and that is why we have put up money for feasibility on 14 sites in Queensland and $130 million on the table for Rookwood Weir. Unfortunately, the Queensland Labor government has been either tardy or unwilling to participate in it—we are still waiting for their support so we can get these things moving. Also in the member's electorate is one of those feasibility studies, at Cloncurry. We have to try and drive these agendas forward, because we know that water is wealth and, if we are driving jobs and creating jobs, we have to create the water infrastructure.

The member for Kennedy can take some solace in the fact that we are hard at work in Tasmania building that same water infrastructure. We have completed Chaffey Dam. We have also put money on the table for the South-West Loddon Pipeline and for the Macalister Irrigation District. These programs are up and running and we want to start more. We want to go further. We want to be the government that has the vision to build the water infrastructure.

I appreciate the trip that I took with the member for Kennedy to Hell's Gates, where we also have put money on the table for the feasibility study on that. That would be a tremendous project. But we need the same sense of fervour, the same sense of excitement as we have seen from the people who built the Snowy Mountains scheme. That is the sort of vision that our nation is looking for. That is the sort of vision that people want from a government, a government that actually believes in the delivery of the tactile, in the things that you can see, rather than standing on their philosophical log and procrastinating and just waiting and waiting and waiting until nothing happens.

So, if it is the vision that you had on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede, where not-so-good King John was taken on by the not-so-good feudal lords, then that is the sort of vision. But, ultimately, the document was sustainable through time, and we want to build the water infrastructure that is sustainable through time for the Australian people.

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