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

I only wish that the member for Batman had gone on to speak about submarines. He could not have got any lower than he just did in that speech. There was only one thing that the previous government had that was better than this one and that was the member for Batman.

Being here today is like watching tenants about to be evicted from the house. They have taken over a brand new, shiny, fully-paid-for house, and over the six years that they were in charge they have let it crumble down. The pink batts are smouldering in the ceiling, the children are huddled around the one laptop. Remember that? One laptop for every child. They managed to get about 25 per cent of them delivered before they became obsolete. They are looking around wondering what happened to the Fuelwatch and the GroceryWatch websites.

This MPI is about a party's wrong priorities, and what we saw with the previous government were certainly wrong priorities. From a television show on the ABC we saw a knee-jerk reaction when the live cattle trade was removed. We saw, not only a relationship with one of our most valuable neighbours to the north severely damaged, but the entire industry, an entire section of Australia, nearly wiped out economically because of their lack of priorities when looking after Australian industry.

We saw how the BER program worked in my part of the world at the school in Louth. It was a wonderful program as they now have a classroom for each child. We have four children, so they built another classroom. Unfortunately, one of the kids left, so now we have four classrooms and three kids, but it is a great program. A young contractor in Dubbo could not get paid because of the mismanagement of the BER program. He took his crane out on a Sunday and pulled down the shelter shed and took it home because of the mismanagement.

We saw the pink batts program, where every shonky and dodgy dealer within three or four continents converged on Australia and absolutely ripped off pensioners—mainly people who were too frail to go out and have a look for themselves. When the family member turned up, the batts were still bundled up and not even spread out. It was an absolute disgrace. We had Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch and we had a mining tax that came with $17 billion of expenditure and $600,000 of income. It was an absolute disgrace.

The member for Grayndler spoke in his opening address about breaking plates at a Greek wedding. What we saw with the previous government was a Greek tragedy. We saw the previous government take the strongest economy in the Western world and turn it into a Greek economy. What we saw was an absolute disgrace. The member for Grayndler asked, 'What about some projects where we can see some bulldozers in action?' I can take him to one: the Moree bypass. It was funded with $55 million when John Anderson was the minister and it was completely botched and squandered by the then Labor government in New South Wales. It was left to Warren Truss and Duncan Gay to come up with the funds for the Moree bypass. It was an absolute disgrace by the previous government.

This government is getting on and doing the job. Another example is the inland rail. We now have an implementation committee. We are now seriously building that link from Brisbane to Melbourne, which will be the 'steel Mississippi'. It will revolutionise not only freight transfer in Australia but also build economies through western New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. We now have free trade agreements. So when that railway line is built, we will be able to export produce from western New South Wales straight into Korea, China and Japan. We now have a government that has a vision for the people it represents.

What about the carbon tax? Under the previous government, we had a tax that made everything that we produce more expensive than the products of our competitors—with Australian farmers having to pay more for their fuel, fertiliser and freight than their American counterparts—for no environmental gain.

Mr Conroy interjecting—

Don't talk rubbish to me. We have two Conroys in this place, and I am not going to say which one is the most clever. We have a Conroy who delivered an NBN and I do not think the other Conroy has much ability to do much more! This MPI is an absolute farce. (Time expired)

See this speech in context