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

I'm looking forward this Saturday to attending the Rural Fire Service medallion presentations at Murrumbateman, and there'll be a number of long-serving firefighters who will be acknowledged and recognised for the decades that they have volunteered to the RFS and to keeping their community safe. I will be catching up with Katie Anderson and others, the district administrator there.

No doubt I will be told when I'm at Murrumbateman that the duplication of the Barton highway is still very, very important. It's been completely neglected and rejected once again in last night's budget by Labor. I do well remember when the now member for Eden-Monaro at her by-election promised $140 million. The only bitumen that has been laid on the duplication of the Barton Highway was put there by me as the Deputy Prime Minister and infrastructure minister, and we haven't yet seen the money that Labor promised in that by-election materialise. We haven't seen it become bitumen. The duplication of the Barton Highway is necessary. So many people, so many public servants indeed from Canberra, are now choosing to have the lifestyle of living in the Yass Valley. It's a beautiful area, it's picturesque, but we have to get that final section of the Barton duplicated. Anything less is simply not good enough.

I spent more than a week on prepolls at Farrer, and you get plenty of free and frank and fair advice. Of course, the Murray-Darling Basin is something close to the hearts of all those people in Farrer. Seeing $103 million cut from the National Water Grid last night is something that they will find very difficult to stomach. I know the Nationals put on the table $30 million to improve the water quality at Narrandera. I don't think that money will now see the light of day, given last night's budget and what happened in that election on Saturday. But we will fight on, and we will always protect our country constituents, whether they are under a Nationals banner or not. Hopefully we'll be able to form government at the next election and make sure that Narrandera gets the water quality it needs for drinking, for bathing and for washing.

We saw also $10 billion cut from regional infrastructure—$6.15 billion from the Inland Rail and $4.7 billion from infrastructure spending as a whole. Our councils cannot sustain the road maintenance. Our regional roads are crumbling. This is leading to a higher road toll. It's simply not good enough, and shame on Labor for last night's budget, rejecting regional Australia once again.