Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The budget rhetoric we heard last night from Labor shows they are taking the Australian people for mugs. While proclaiming to take pressure off Aussie families and lift living standards, Labor is, in reality, taxing aspiration, lifting the ladder from young would-be investors and pouring an irresponsible level of migrants into our already overstretched networks—from housing to health and everywhere in between.

For the regions, it appears that any savings made in this budget are at our expense: $4.7 billion cut from infrastructure; $103 million cut from the national water grid; $191 million cut from pest and disease, regional trade and drought funding for farmers; and $21 million cut from regional communications funding. That's money being ripped away from nation building and redistributed to Labor's metrocentric pet projects, with a tax cut of $4.80 a week—not enough to even buy you a coffee.

Infrastructure and communications funding are, literally, lifelines for my communities. We're seeing them brutalised by this Labor government, and that shows the true lack of care they hold for my electorate of Cowper. The irony is that solutions to so many of our nation's problems lie in the regions: housing, resources, food and sovereignty. That's what the regions have to offer in this country. But Labor continues to ignore us. (Time expired)

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