Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Briefly, I would like to concur with the remarks from the member for Warringah. Domestic violence, especially domestic violence against women, is an absolute scourge. Having worked with the St Vincent de Paul and other organisations and coming across it, what happens to people is a complete and utter disgrace.

Tonight I was asked to do an adjournment speech. To be frank, it's the first one I have ever given. I was rather surprised, a little bit flummoxed and I was trying to work out what on earth I was going to talk about. What would be a poignant issue for tonight? Then the obvious came to me. It's on my lapel. It's the only reason I am here. It's the people of New England, the seat of New England, the people who gave me this great honour. Country seats are like little countries. Everybody knows the electorate the town is in. They are very aware of who their local member is. I am not detracting from other areas, but in many urban seats people are not quite sure what side of the street one seat starts and another seat finishes, but they most certainly do in regional areas.

My seat that I represent—the great honour of representing the seat of New England—is 500 kilometres long. It starts in Aberdeen and goes all the way to the Queensland border. In fact, to the north-east of the seat of New England is a seat called Wright. It goes into the suburbs of Brisbane. No-one ever thinks about just how far north it goes. The north of the seat does not work on daylight savings time. It works on Queensland time because the major towns that they deal with are all in Queensland.

As a child I used to put NRMA maps up on the wall. You would probably remember them. They had all the little towns. They were given to you because the roads were a little bit more confusing in those days. With those maps, as a child, I would look at all the towns and try and work out—because I had a fascination for politics and a desire for it from around about the age of 10—where the little towns are, and to try and get my mind around what the issues might be for those towns and how you could represent them.

The way it works is people have a view to what you have done, what you are doing and what you are planning to do. Overwhelmingly, it is not about politics; it is about delivery. I would say about 10 per cent is about philosophy and about 90 per cent is about delivery, about delivery on roads, telecommunications, health, education. So you can have people who are supporters who might not actually agree with your political philosophies on other issues, but they fight for you because of your desire to deliver. This is the sentiment of what I would like to talk about tonight. Whether it's the delivery of the Chaffey Dam; the Quipolly Dam; the Bolivia Hill realignment; the Scone bypass; the Scone saleyards; the Armajun medical centre, which is an Aboriginal medical centre; the Inverell saleyards; the movement of APVMA to Armidale; the money we've spent on the airports or smaller roads or things such as upgrading the Woolbrook Stampede Grounds, which is my local area; the Nambour showgrounds; the kitchen at Currabubula Pony Club; or the hall in Bundarra these are all incredibly important.

Just the other day I was out because the people of Wollomombi want a new public toilet. Other people may giggle about that but the people of Wollomombi certainly don't. They want to have handicap access to a toilet. It's an old besser block monstrosity. For the dignity of their little village they want a new public toilet. At Ebor they want to do up the Union Church. It is called the Union Church because every faith goes there, but now it's now a community centre. They also want a new bore at the local showgrounds. These are part of the plans. Big plans in the future include the construction of Dungowan Dam.

I want to commend the work that Minister Taylor has being doing to assist us in getting the Ovens River pumped hydro up and running.

This project is going to be in excess of a billion dollars. We've put a million dollars into the feasibility study and now we're working very hard towards obtaining the finance and working with the proponents of the construction of this major piece of infrastructure, which I hope will also help us upgrade the Kempsey to Wollomombi road, which has basically fallen down the hill since the flood.

The last thing I'd like to do is give a big shout-out to the Walcha Rams, my old team, who beat the Harbour Knights. They are grand final champions—2½ thousand people beating a city of 70,000. Well done, boys!