Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have seven seconds to agree with the member for Indi that regional health services are indeed important, but that is not why I am here today. I would like to speak today about the historic agreement that was reached yesterday between the Leader of the Nationals and the Leader of the Liberal Party in forming what now will be known as the Truss-Turnbull or Turnbull-Truss government—much the same. The negotiation that took place yesterday was a model that we can follow in this place. A couple of years ago, we saw a negotiation to form government with the Greens and a couple of Independents from New South Wales, and it was like a Dutch auction. The Greens demanded that we have a carbon tax and wipe out small business and affect the low-income earners of regional Australia—they did not have much to ask for! And the Independents asked for about $10 billion worth of funding, from a mining tax that was going to kill the mining industry in Australia—so they did not ask for much either!

Yesterday Mr Truss and Mr Turnbull came to some key agreements. Probably the most important—and mentioned by my colleague the member for Riverina just then—is the transfer of water from the Environment portfolio into Agriculture. This is not going to be an attempt to blow up the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The irrigators in the Parkes electorate, which is 25 per cent of the Basin, are fatigued and fed up to their back teeth. This will make sure that we have that triple-bottom-line approach—environment, community and agriculture—not just a one-sided approach. I think that that is a sensible movement. There is some more assistance for stay-at-home mums and there is certainty around a plebiscite for same-sex marriage, which will be after the next election. And there is a guarantee that, when the Prime Minister goes to Paris at the end of the year, we will have the climate change policy that has been agreed to in the coalition. We will not see any change in that. That will give assurance to the people of my electorate, because quite frankly, with regard to climate change, we are doing better than predicted. We are actually supressing and abating more carbon than was predicted, certainly more than under the previous government. We were very sure that we wanted to keep that scheme as it was. There is also confirmation that we are going to continue with the Inland Rail project, our agriculture white paper and the dams policy. These are all sensible projects and policies that are good for regional Australia. This is not holding a gun at anyone's head. It is sensible, proper government.