Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

So do it, rather than ripping it out of the budget! That's absolutely disgraceful. I don't know how you live with yourselves or sleep at night when you do that—when you're not even prepared to look after our veterans. Then there's the Proserpine P&C. We do the heavy lifting in the bush. All they're chasing is $50,000—that was in the budget—for some shade and softball. They have already raised the money for all the playground equipment—gone! You've taken away some funding from the kids! Absolutely disgraceful. We had a pledge at the Alligator Creek Community and Sports Club to provide some of our elderly people who play bowls with some shade and also to do up their clubhouse. But no—absolutely taken out as well.

One of my colleagues, Michelle Landry, was speaking about the Urannah dam project, a nation-building project, before. It's 20,000 hectares of agriculture opened up on pumped hydro. Those on the opposite side are all for renewable energy, so why wouldn't you be part of that? This project is right next door to the north-south grid. You can actually put the electricity straight in. It provides water for mining, agriculture and urban use. It's wealth creation, a nation-building project, and you rip it out. But what we did get from the other side is increased cost-of-living pressures. Electricity, by their own forecasts, is going up 56 per cent. That was after they got elected on a promise of a $275 reduction in power bills. I know you don't want to know about that, you don't want to talk about that—you can't even mention the word or the number—but that is what you got elected on, and you've just walked away from it.

Fuel has gone up. I've got a guy in my area that cannot afford the fuel for his trucks to keep the business going, because he can't pass on those extra costs to his customers. What a debacle the ag visa is. And thank the good Lord that you've at least let Vietnam come back in. You tried to scrap it, but you let Vietnam come back in. At least that way we can put some food on people's tables. I've never come across such a cruel government in all my life.

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