James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time driving around Queensland, holding a lot of mobile offices—everywhere from Cairns to Burketown, Hughenden to Gundy and a few places in between. Councillor Andrew Cripps, from Hinchinbrook Shire Council, travelled with me part of the way, and we listened to the struggles that Queenslanders are facing in remote, rural and regional Queensland. It is quite depressing, suffering under a state Labor government and a federal Labor government. Crime is out of control. A health crisis is being felt across the state. Families are unable to pay their bills and people with full-time jobs are unable to find a home to live in, due to the cost-of-living crisis.

What really brought me to the brink, though, was the secret flood. This is the flood that no-one talks about. If a natural disaster like this happened south of the border, it would be front page news. It would lead the ABC news, Sky News and all the commercial news. This is a flood that decimated north-west Queensland, but what we've had from the federal Labor government is crickets. We have a prime minister who talks about how much he cares for Australia, but he has not visited this devastated part of Queensland. He's had time to go to weddings and the tennis, but he has not gone to north-west Queensland.

Thousands of kilometres of Queensland were flooded. Fifty thousand head of cattle were drowned. We've had severe homelessness, including in parts of Queensland where there is already poverty. Communities like Doomadgee have been smashed even further by this flood, but federal and state Labor governments have failed to deliver for Queensland. (Time expired)