John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly. I am sorry. My apologies, Mr Acting Deputy President. I rise to contribute to this debate, which I think is a waste of time—a political hand grenade thrown across the chamber. It is about the only time I ever agreed with the Greens leader, Senator Di Natale: we should actually talk about proper, decent issues that relate to the people.

We have the criticism from those opposite. Senator Bilyk says it is our financial management. How ironic is that? You would remember 2007, when the Rudd government were elected. What sort of financial position were they in? What were they in? They were in a position of money in the bank—net debt free. What sort of a mess did they make of it? The first budget was going to be a surplus, and, then, of course, they were into debt building. Remember the handing out of the money. Remember the schools building program, the economic stimulus package and Building the Education Revolution, where many builders did not even get paid. The contractors went broke, sadly. And even down at Wagga Wagga, where they built one of the buildings, we were launching a National Party campaign there, and the building fell over. So it was not built very well or very solidly.

I want to talk about some positive things we have done in government—some real positives. The coalition has committed an additional $60 million to the Mobile Black Spot Program. That would make a total of $220 million. The Mobile Black Spot Program has already delivered 499 new services and upgraded mobile base stations. How many new mobile towers did the Labor Party build in government in six years? Have a guess. We have now completed 499. How many do you think Labor built in their six years? Would it have been 200? We have done 499 in a bit over three years. Do you think they would have done 200 in six years? No. Do you think it might have been 100, Senator Ruston? No. Let us go down to 10. They did not build 10 new mobile towers for people in regional areas especially—they did not build any. Zero! That is what regional telecommunications means to the Australian Labor Party. They do not care about people in regional areas having a telecommunications system. They built zero. I am pleased to see that my colleagues Senator Fiona Nash and Minister Barnaby Joyce have pushed hard on these very issues to succeed and have those rollouts of the mobile black spot phone system being done, and more every day.

Senator Nash announced today the Building Better Regions Fund. What a good fund this is—almost $300 million. Regional Australia allows our cities to exist. That is the fact: regional Australia allows our cities to exist. It supplies the energy sources, the food—you name it, regional Australia provides the primary production. There is a huge potential for economic growth in regional areas. What a good job Senator Canavan is doing about putting the developments into northern Australia. There is huge potential up there. We need to grow our exports and grow our industries to feed hundreds of millions of people around the world. People rely on Australia to feed them. It is good to see the growth there. It is good to see the steps going forward to build dams. Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson, I know you are a big supporter of building dams. I appreciate that very much. With the dams come not only the water to grow more food, for more exports and more jobs, but also the hydro schemes for electricity—a good renewable, clean way of generating electricity.

Badgerys Creek: how long did the opposition, the Labor Party, talk about another airport for Sydney? When we go to Sydney Airport, as I am sure all of us in this place do on a frequent basis, it is congested and often running late. So at last former Nationals leader and transport minister Warren Truss made the announcement and got on with the job to build another airport, because the one we have now is simply not big enough.

Inland rail: I do not know how many of you have driven up the Newell Highway of late. It is a very busy highway. There are many, many trucks and B-doubles. They are simply doing their job, doing their work and I wish them well, being someone who has driven trucks for some period of my life. $893.7 million has been budgeted to finalise reconstruction and acquire the land necessary to construct the project—to buy the land back, because you cannot run the train line through a house or property without buying it back and giving proper compensation. We have started on-the-ground work to deliver the inland rail, as I said, with $893.7 million, with the route through Karara and Leyburn, the regional connection to the Charlton and Wellcamp areas, and the route west of Warwick via Karara and Clifton. That is well and truly under way, thanks to the coalition government.

The NBN is being rolled out. We know that the original plan was going to be hugely expensive. The government's equity contribution of $29.5 billion to NBN Co is expected to be fully utilised in the current financial year. The good news on that today is that it is being rolled out. The good news is that where I live, near Inverell in northern New South Wales, it will be rolled out in the second half of next year, and in the New England area in the first half. It is good to see that proceeding. Sky Muster—the satellites to provide good, fast broadband communication for some 440,000 residents—is being rolled out as well. It is another great initiative by the coalition government.

The rural general practice grants—we all know the importance of health and having those services provided to us. We now have some support going out, just announced by my colleague the Assistant Minister for Rural Health, David Gillespie. Grants of up to $300,000 will be provided to medical practices in rural areas to train and retain health professionals. You need good facilities, you need good buildings. Here we are assisting those regional GP practices to improve their facilities and to retain young doctors in regional areas, which is most important.

We abolished the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. Remember that? That ruling by the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal earlier this year, which was to come in by 4 April, was going to send 35,000 mum-and-dad businesses—owner-driver truckies—broke. Luckily we got in and abolished that crazy idea. The registered organisations bill is now passed to make sure that union leaders are accountable for their actions just the same as directors of companies are. We hope the ABCC bill will go through very soon. The backpacker tax that Labor increased from 29 per cent to 32½ per cent in government—the AAT ruled that it must include backpackers—hopefully very soon we will have that cleaned up as well. I am glad to say that on 1 January liquidators changes come, which I pushed very hard to have.