Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

They don't want it in Manly, as the member for Hinkler said. They would work absolutely perfectly in Middle Head. You could make your virtue signal to everyone on the ferries as they're coming across. They would say: 'There are the virtuous people of the seat of Warringah, and there's their small wind farm. There are only three or four towers there—there they are!' You could have a couple on North Head. That'd be a real virtue. But, of course, it's not virtue they're selling—it's hypocrisy, because they want the pain for someone else.

You know what the member for McMahon said? 'Well, we're building more Marinus Links to bring power across from Tasmania, and that's why we're pro-renewable.' You know where the power comes from in Tasmania? It's not from solar or from wind. It's from hydroelectricity. And I've got no problems with that. It's just that the Labor Party doesn't believe in building dams. In fact, regarding all the money that I, the member for Hinkler and others in the Nationals went out and fought for—and got—the first decision Labor made was to get rid of that money for dams. What the member for McMahon—that very colourful, well-dressed, handsomeyoung fellow down there—said is that there's a form of renewables that works, and it is hydroelectricity. But, because they're held captive by the Greens, the Labor Party does not build dams that actually generate hydro.

Now, if you want to build hydroelectric dams then go ahead with Hells Gate and Urannah. Go ahead with Dungowan. Put a hydro plant on every dam around Australia—knock yourself out! It's true: it's a great source of power. This is part of a culture change that myself, the member for Hinkler and others are trying to bring about—to try to get a sense of reality back into what we're doing. The reason we need baseload power at 50 hertz—whether you believe in global warming or don't believe in global warming, sort of believe it, kind of believe in it or are emphatic about it, you had better believe in physics—is that if you do not have the grid at 50 hertz it collapses. If it's too high, it collapses. If it's too low, it collapses. As vastly more proficient people than me in this have said, it's like balancing the electricity pencil on the tip of your finger. It has to have constant pressure on each side to keep it there. What renewables do is jump up and down on either side of the pencil and the pencil falls off.

It's not only that: what we also see in New England of course—and we have a vision for New England and that's how we vote—was about the New England Highway, which is the corridor of commerce bringing people from Sydney up to South-East Queensland. Remember that from the top of New England, the top of my seat, I can see the glow of the lights of Brisbane. The seat next to me in the north-east goes into the suburbs of Brisbane. So the New England Highway is a great connector, and one big part of the New England Highway is the Tenterfield bypass. We've done Bolivia Hill—we did that in government. But Tenterfield: at 40 kilometres an hour, a truck with flammable liquid crashed just down the road from my office. If that had blown up people would have died. We have to get these trucks out of Tenterfield so that we can make sure that the New England Highway can continue with a speed of at least 80 kilometres an hour all through its length: that's our goal.

We've done the Scone bypass, the Bolivia Hill realignment and we're working towards it, but if the Tenterfield bypass is delayed then that's actually a delay on commerce. It's one of the big connectors between the City of Sydney and that huge city called South-East Queensland—it's one big city, to be quite frank. So we've got to work on that.

We also have a vision in the New England to have veterinary, pest, plant and animal chemicals—the regulatory capacity for those. That's one of the reasons that we brought the APVMA up to Armidale—so it could become a centre of excellence. We were starting a school of international regulatory science there and actually bringing people from all around the world. People in Thailand and Indonesia aren't dopey; they say, 'If it works for you, it works for us.' If we have one centre that does all of this together then we can basically have a bulk-booking on the regulation of chemicals. Armidale was the perfect place to do it because there's the University of New England and the rural science students, and it does all the monitoring for the sugarcane in Queensland and a lot of that. There's sugarcane to the north and in the Northern Rivers; there's the cattle industry and the wool industry; and the cotton industry out at Narrabri. There's the wheat industry and the grain industry. All those industries are there and so the people who actually regulate these chemicals don't live in a silo in Canberra but could actually live where the farmers live. That's very, very important to get that proper cross-fertilisation of ideas. We were starting the process of doing something that was going to be really substantial for the City of Armidale and also incredibly good for Australia, but the Labor Party knocked that on the head. No, they don't believe in that. I don't know where their vision is but they don't believe in that vision.

The Labor Party also talks about wanting high-paying manufacturing jobs, and that's a great idea. Don't we all? One of the great opportunities for high-paying jobs is for us to go into the small modular reactor industry, where all the other parts of the globe are going except us. Except us! Argentina, Canada, the United States, China, Japan, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom, France, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, but not us—not us! So we're going to get left behind on these jobs, that really will pay well. People always try this puerile debate, saying, 'Do you want a small modular reactor in your area?' Well, yes, I do. Honestly, with 16 metres high and 14 metres wide, you could have it on the family's plates.

It would be a lot better than the wind towers they're putting up. We're going to have more structures, over 230 metres high, around the town of Walcha, a town of 2,000 people, than the Sydney CBD. How popular do you think that idea is? For every one of those wind towers, going to environmental things, there's one raptor death per year. If there were 520 wind towers around Walcha, there would be 520 eagle deaths a year. That's on the environmental part, but that's just where you want to look. It is a ridiculous form of technology, which is going to be outdated so soon. Do you know who's responsible for pulling those wind towers down? It ain't the state government. It's not the federal government. It's not the people who put them up. It's the person who owns the land: the farmer. The cost quoted to me of pulling down one wind tower was between $500,000 and $700,000. It's much cheaper to put them up than to pull them down—you need specialised cranes for specialised outcomes.

But that's not something that we hear from the member for McMahon or the minister for the environment. We don't hear him talking about this problem. We don't hear him talking about the fact that this is creating so much friction in regional areas. And this is why he is such a great asset for us, because I can tell you that the member for McMahon is hellishly unpopular, in the way that he is egotistical and seems not have a discerning understanding of the other side of the argument.

Under our new Labor government, we've also managed to lose so many other things that were great for New England: vital projects applied for in round 6 of the Building Better Regions Fund, which have been scrapped altogether: an aquatic centre for Inverell; funding for the New England Regional Art Museum's Howard Hinton display; Oxley lookout; Oxley skywalk; and Tamworth town pool. All these things have been lost. Apparently, when you get something in a regional area, it's pork-barrelling. I just listened to the television, and they were talking about $750 million or something in Sydney for a new fish market. Good luck and God bless them. That's a lot of money for a building that sells fish.

What we do in regional areas is turn on the news every night and, because it always comes out of Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, we see all the things that Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth get. But we don't see the things that Tamworth, Armidale, Orange and, many times, Newcastle get. When we go in to bat for them, the only thing they come back to us with is that delivering for regional areas is pork-barrelling. No, that's us trying to get a fair share.

If you take the capital infrastructure per square kilometre in an urban environment such as Sydney and compare it to the public capital infrastructure in an environment such as—I don't know—Tennant Creek, Sydney wins. Stand on a big building, and you'll see multiple public hospitals, multiple high schools and public trains—they've got the whole lot. That's why now, and in the past—and it's great to see the member for Lingiari here—we're going to fight for things for Tennant Creek, Katherine and Alice Springs. Do you know what they said? They said it's pork-barrelling. Well, it's not. It's trying to bring fairness, and it's trying to bring equivalence. Yes, you ruffle feathers when you do it because you've got to. Otherwise, you just don't get anything.

There's one good thing that I'm happy we are continuing along with, and—it's a classic one—that's the Outback Way, through Boulia, Alice and Laverton. It's a very important piece of infrastructure. I'll tell you about what people said on my own side. They were screaming at me, saying: 'What on earth do we want this for? Why are you getting this? No-one lives there.' And I said, 'No-one ever will unless we build this infrastructure to get this road sealed.' I also said, 'By the way, people do live there—just not many people.' People do live in Boulia, people do live in Laverton, people do live in Alice and people do live in these areas. The way we bring a full economic opportunity for them is to have sealed roads so the tourists go through, so the critical minerals can go out, so we can keep Mount Isa going with the capacity to process critical minerals there and so we can give people opportunities.

But we can't get any opportunities unless we seal the road. A third sealed road across Australia is not a bad idea! It's taken us long enough just to do two of them. The third one is not a bad idea. It's great to see the member for Lingiari here. I hope that's something we keep firing up—and get ready for the same pushback I got on that, with them saying, 'We'll just kick it into the long grass for a while and wait a little longer.' No, no, no, it's happening. It's got to happen. These are the sorts of things that make our nation stronger.

A few people got Australia Day awards, and I think it's really important to acknowledge them. Anzac Day, which I know the member for Herbert is very aware of, is to represent those who have paid the supreme sacrifice and served our nation in a military context. It's incredibly important. Australia Day is incredibly important for those who do it in a civil context, that they get proper recognition. They might not have gone to war or worn the uniform but they've spent so much of their lives working for others. One of the reasons to go to Australia Day is to recognise these people and to and say thank you. They do stuff, for no payment, just because they think it makes Australia a better place.

Robbie Sefton AM is one. You see her in town. She works for so many—she's been with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Smarter Regions CRCs, High Performance Soils, Watertrust Australia, headspace and on the panel for independent assessment of the Murray-Darling Basin. She's done so many things, and every time you see Robbie she's such a pleasant, happy person who just seems to do these jobs and then take on the next task, and does that as well.

There's Kevin Clifton. He's done a lot of work. Kevin's a strong Rotary member. His work around Tamworth has been—whether it's the Tamworth South Public School or anything else, he's always there. He's a former principal, and he's done so much strong work for his local area. Dr Phil Hungerford does emergency medicine. He's a great doctor, well respected, and he's well earned his award. Wilfred MacBeth, down at Quirindi, earned an award for the work he's done in so many community music activities, entertainment and at a retirement village in Quirindi. He planted over 3,000 trees for wildlife corridors. Janette Berman was awarded. She's in education at the University of Melbourne and the University of New England. Deni McKenzie was awarded for her services around, especially, Uralla and Armidale, Armidale Care for Seniors, Climate Action Armidale, Progressive Cinema and McCrossins Mill.

I'm not saying for a second that all these people would vote for me, but I'll tell you what: they've done so much for their communities and they need to be recognised. These people have done all these things by just working for their communities. They all have their beliefs, in where Australia is supposed to go, and they put their shoulder to the wheel and they work for us.

Rosemary Curtis was awarded for her work with the Indigenous community of Glen Innes. I had a yarn to Rosemary. She's been so good, involved in Pathfinders, National Parks, the NAIDOC Week committee, the Glen Innes local Aboriginal Lands Council, and was an Aboriginal community liaison officer. She worked at the Glen Innes High School. Rosemary is one of these people, in the community of Glen Innes, where they see their job as advancing the prospects and the future of the Aboriginal people in her area. In that area, they refer to themselves as Aboriginal. They always pull me up and say, 'It's A day, not I day.'

We've got Judith Ward who has done so much work, especially in education. And there's Preston Campbell. He and I went up to the Territory for a bit, with people tied up with the king browns. He's a good fella, a Tingha boy. The work he's doing with Aboriginal communities—he's never forgotten where he came from, in Tingha. He's just a good bloke, and to recognise the work that he's done is so important.

That's, for me, Australia Day, to say to these people, 'Thank you.' We should do that. In life, there are some people who just chuck papers out the window of a car. I don't know why they do it, but they do it. There are some people who just complain about people who chuck papers out the window of a car, and they don't really help much. Then you've got the marvellous people who make Australia strong, the ones who stop the car, get out, pick the papers up and make the place look better. That is what we recognise in these awards.

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