Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition does not, as you would expect, support all of the policies and programs in the federal budget. However, the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026, the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2025-2026 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026 do provide the legislative mechanism by which the policies and programs of the government's 2025-26 budget need to be funded. Of course the opposition does not oppose or delay this. Supply needs to be given. I won't quite go as far as to say 'confidence', because there are many people across the country in metropolitan cities, in regional Australia and in remote communities who do not have confidence in this government, and for good reason.

I've just finished a meeting with Jo Marshall from Crookwell, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Agricultural Centre. She was telling me about the concern in Upper Lachlan Shire about the number of wind turbines, those monstrosities that are being rolled out supposedly to get Australia to net zero. They are being rolled out in a reckless way. In Upper Lachlan, the 11 wind factories support 340 wind turbines ranging from 126 metres high to 185 metres high. There is a proposal on the books to have another wind factory in that shire which won't even be connected to the grid. Why on Earth would they want to build such a piece of infrastructure when it is not going to be connected to the grid, when it is not going to supply power to the energy system?

Crookwell suffers from blackouts all the time. As extraordinary as that sounds, when it represents about 53 per cent of the total green energy projects in the state, time and again that town is cast into blackness, into darkness, because it doesn't have enough power to support itself. The proposal put the town on diesel generator back-ups. That's the folly of this system, and that's just a microcosm of the future that awaits Australia. Crookwell has an aged-care home. Crookwell has a childcare centre. Crookwell has a hospital. When it is pitched into darkness, when the power goes off, those important facilities need to have energy to continue to operate. That can lead to dramas with people being kept alive, quite frankly. It's all well and good for the leafy suburbs of the teal-voting centres of Sydney, but it's not good enough when you've got a country town supporting more than half of the green energy projects in the state getting put into blackouts all of the time.

The Australian editorial of 12 February, today, talks of the trillion-dollar-debt milestone drawing close. It reads:

As Australia's debt soars towards the $1 trillion mark in a matter of weeks, before the May budget, Wednesday was a dreadful day for the nation's economic outlook. A parliamentary hearing uncovered a previously undisclosed $54bn blowout in the government's medium-term budget position.

We hear the Treasurer in question time all the time talking about $1 trillion worth of Liberal Party debt. Fact-checked, it's a nonsense. It truly is. When the coalition government left office in May 2022, the debt was nowhere near a trillion dollars. It was not. It was high, yes, it was. We as a coalition were approaching a budget surplus—the first for many years.

Of course, then COVID hit, and COVID brought with it a number of almighty challenges this nation had not faced ever, you could say. Certainly for a hundred years we had not had a global pandemic. A virus was killing, elsewhere in the world, many, many people, such that there were open graves being dug on Manhattan Island in New York, and churches in Italy were being used as morgues to place coffins of people who had succumbed to this new disease. Italy and the United States of America have good health systems. They do, and you would know that, Deputy Speaker Freelander, from your experience in the medical field. I always acknowledge the role that you've played, particularly in paediatrics, Member for Macarthur.

I can recall the meeting where the chief health officer, Dr Brendan Murphy, described to us the situation. If we did not act, within weeks there would potentially be 50,000 to 55,000 deaths from this virus emanating from China. It was early 2020, and we closed the borders to China. We did everything that we could, as a responsible government would, to ensure that Australians were kept safe. There weren't too many in that room. There was the Chief of the Defence Force; there was the Prime Minister, of course—at the time, Scott Morrison—and there was the Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, who was a fine health minister and the member for Flinders. There were others besides, but there were only a few of the executive government in that room.

Yet, despite those ominous warnings given by Dr Murphy, what we managed to do as a government was achieve a worldwide status, which the Johns Hopkins centre acknowledged, of being the second-best nation for preparedness to COVID. Through the rollout of the vaccines, we saved many, many lives—not only in Australia but also in the islands of the Pacific. We looked after our close neighbours; we looked after the regional rim of the blue Pacific. Closer to home, there was JobKeeper. Through JobKeeper, 1.1 million jobs were created in those three years since the pandemic hit—or the two-and-a-bit years from the time we lost government—and 700,000 jobs were saved.

Losing government was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was a bit like Winston Churchill losing office after doing so much to protect Great Britain from the perils of the Nazis in World War II. But that's politics. You move on and you try to do your best in the national interest, and indeed that's what we did. But I have to say it does gall me when the member for Rankin, the Treasurer, then thumbs his nose at the work that was done during those dark years. We were trying to keep the doors of businesses open. We were trying to stop people from going into Great Depression-like food queues and job queues. We saved Australians. We saved the lives of so many tens of thousands of Australians who are alive, vital and healthy today because of what we did as a government. I'm proud of what we did. It was difficult.

I acknowledge that, last week, the Prime Minister worked through National Cabinet to, he says, achieve better outcomes for the state public hospital system. I acknowledge that because health is crucially important. Working through that National Cabinet process at the start, at the outset of COVID-19, when the National Cabinet was set up, there was good cooperation too. I also acknowledge—and the member for Wannon might pick something up and throw it at me in a minute—the work that I was able to achieve in getting trucks over borders. It doesn't sound like much these days. Jacinta Allan, the then minister for transport and infrastructure in Victoria, and Mark Bailey, the then minister for transport and main roads in Queensland, as Labor ministers, in the national interest, worked with me to make sure that trucks carrying vital vaccines and, just as importantly, food were able to get over the border.

When given the task, it was taking four hours. After the cooperation I was given by those two ministers—Rita Saffioti in Western Australia was very, very good too—but also the other ministers, Liberal and Labor alike, trucks were able to get over the border in four minutes, not four hours. I acknowledge the work. I appreciate that some of us have moved on and taken other roles—Victoria is a bit of a mess at the moment, and I look forward to seeing a new government in place there—but I acknowledge the work that was done back in 2020, when things were grim. These are appropriations—it's about spending, stripping back and putting in place rules and regulations over water buybacks and water allocations.

Murray Watt, the senator for Queensland, in Goolwa just the other day talked about the stripping back of environmental protections that he alleges the coalition did. What the coalition did was ensured that the river system was protected whilst at the same time acknowledging the vital role that our irrigation farmers and towns play in producing the food and fibre that Australia and many other countries need. What worries me is that when Labor and the Greens get their hands on the Murray-Darling system what you end up with is a system that is imbalanced. It tips way too much in favour of green groups. What we do need is our farmers to be able to get the water that they pay for. Whenever the government enters the water buyback place and space, the price of water goes through the roof, and it is such a shame. It is such a shame.

The appropriation bills also need to cover national security measures. I'll tell you what, if ever we need good and tight national security and safety measures, it is right now. I was amazed this morning that on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation vote we had eight people—the Green in this House, the member for Ryan and some independents—voting against the motion that the government put forward. It was lost, thankfully, 106 to eight. We need to be a cohesive society. I will agree with the member for Bruce on that score. At the moment, what we've seen in metropolitan protests but also in country towns is alarming and disturbing.

I have to say I support the New South Wales Police 100 per cent. They have been under more pressure than they have needed to be. Premier Chris Minns has said that New South Wales Police are not punching bags, and he is right. There should not have been those protests. The protests should not have been heading in the direction they were, and you see on the footage that is put up that in some of the actions taken by the protesters they had the mobile phones and the cameras all set up and ready to go and then they produced stunts which the police then moved them on from, and now the police are in trouble. I'll tell you what, if I got bitten on the thumb, I would probably react the same way the police did as well. These protesters are professional activists. We've got a right to demonstrate in this nation—we do. It's a free and fair and democratic society in which we live. The right to demonstrate peaceably is there, but they do not have a right to hold up our cities and our country towns over and over and over again. Paul Nicolaou from the Sydney business chamber is right when he says that Sydney business has had a gutful. Those CBD businesses which open their doors and just want to trade are being stopped at every step of the way by these annoying activist protesters, many of whom are nothing more than scum. I'm sorry, but they are. That's all they are. I don't care if you react, because they are scum. There is no other word for them. They are against Australia. The member for Bruce finished by saying some people hate Australia—well, these are people who do. They do hate our nation. They do hate what we stand for. They hate our traditions and they hate everything that we stand for. The police are right in doing what they do to protect the normal, good, everyday, ordinary citizens who've had a gutful of these scum.

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