George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) | Hansard source

The American poet Robert Frost was renowned for his work The Road Not Taken, which centres on a choice between two paths. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood', it begins, with the poet noting that he could not travel both and be one traveller. So, despite eyeing off one path, he:

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

When I came to this place, someone told me about two paths that lay ahead: the path of the poodle and the path of the mongrel. They said that the poodles in politics do what they're told, get the accolades and end up sniffing the ministerial leather right up close. But nothing changes if it's left up to the poodles. That's where the mongrels come in. Political mongrels might be mangy; they might growl when they're grumpy, and they might soil the carpet every so often, but they bark when needed and aren't afraid to nip issues in the bud when needed as well. They keep the poodles in the ministerial leather that they're accustomed to but are pretty much put in the 'never to be promoted' column. It doesn't need to be said that I took the path of the political mongrel.

George Bernard Shaw's comparison of the reasonable man with the unreasonable man comes to mind when talking about political poodles and mongrels:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Political mongrels bring about change. Political mongrels get things done. For my electorate and my people I've proudly been a political mongrel. As a result we've seen some big things delivered for Dawson. The Mackay Ring Road, at nearly half a billion dollars, is the biggest public infrastructure project built in the Mackay region. We've also secured funding for stage 2 of that road, which is the Mackay port access road. Up in the Burdekin the Haughton River bridge has been fixed, and we're flood-proofing that section of the Bruce Highway, with half a billion dollars. Mackay's northern entrance is being upgraded right now, and the Walkerston bypass is about to get going to the west of Mackay. We've seen the Sandy Gully bridge upgraded on the Bruce Highway near Bowen, the upgrade of the southern approaches to Townsville, and overtaking lanes and pavement improvement between Kuttabul and Calen and also near Bloomsbury, between Proserpine and Bowen, just north of Brandon and near Alligator Creek. That's just a fraction of the $2.5 billion worth of projects that has been or is being spent on the Bruce Highway in Dawson.

We've also seen Urannah Dam funded and about to be constructed, and now Hells Gates Dam is also funded. Local roads and community facilities have also gotten a slice of the action. The new Proserpine entertainment centre has just been built. The Whitsunday Sports Park has been redeveloped and given a new clubhouse. There are new Shute Harbour facilities. We've got a headspace for Mackay and now one in Proserpine, too. There's the Mackay Aquatic and Recreation Centre, the redevelopment and extension of the CQ rescue helicopter service hangar and headquarters, the Great Barrier Reef cricket arena being built at Harrup Park Country Club, the Home Hill State High School's multipurpose hall, the new Burdekin basketball courts, and upgrades at Townsville's Brolga Park and at the Townsville Turf Club. I could go on and on listing numerous community groups, sporting clubs and schools that have received new facilities, upgrades and extensions, courtesy of funding that I fought for—not to mention outcomes for industry sectors like agriculture, mining and tourism—but I won't, because we'd be here all day and the parliament has other business to attend to.

But I will dwell for a moment on the bigger achievements that, while benefiting Dawson, are broader than just my electorate. The sugar industry code of conduct is a key example of this. When cane farmers came to me with serious complaints of foreign owned multinational monopoly milling companies trying to offer 'take it or leave it' contracts that cut farmers out of having a say in the pricing of their product, I knew something had to be done. I do not want to see farmers or anyone else in this country basically becoming serfs to a foreign landlord. So I fought, alongside others, for a sugar industry code of conduct which set out the rules for fair agreements between farmers and the monopoly millers and established an umpire—an arbitration system—for disputes around those agreements.

Likewise with insurance premiums in North Queensland going up year after year after year, in some cases by 1,000 per cent over a five-year period: I knew there had to be government intervention. That's why I fought hard to get a northern Australian reinsurance pool established to offset the rising re-insurance burden of cyclones and related flooding and, ultimately, substantially bringing down insurance costs for North Queenslanders.

See this speech in context