David Littleproud
Maranoa · National Party · Australia
“In those communities we enjoyed relatively normal insurance premiums for 10 years—around $2,000 or $3,000 to insure a home in those communities.”
“I would say to the Queensland government to go out; do not rely on the department that has allowed this planning monstrosity to take place to continue to advise you. Get in the car. It's less than three hours from Brisbane. Go and sit in the Duff and Franz front yards, look at this and understand the impact on nonhosts.”
“How can we let the insurance industry determine how the modelling of our premiums is determined, at whim and without any transparency or public oversight?”
“I want to bring to the parliament's attention a matter I raised previously, the Wambo Wind Farm and the human toll that it's taking on the Duffs and the Franzes—the Franzes in particular. They are 80-year-old retirees who have farmed, and want to continue to farm, next to their son.”
“A survey by the local council there said that 37 per cent of residents no longer have insurance—that's insurance for anything; forget just for floods. They can't get insurance on their homes for anything. Overlay that with a young couple that wants to go and get their first mortgage.”
“I rise to update the House on the unfolding insurance crisis in western Queensland. Just to recap, back in 2011-12, St George, Charleville and Roma had huge floods that inundated our communities. There was no protection. There were no levee banks.”
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“That is not the Australia that we deserve to hand over to the next generation. But that's the gutless nature of this government, which hasn't got the courage to face the problem. It will not own up to the problems that have been allowed to seep into this country for— (Time expired)”
“You are impinging on the rights of lawful Australians that—it's been proven—have been doing the right thing; they have been respecting the law. We are trying to solve a problem that is not there. You are taking away the attention from the real problem in this country and from what caused the tragic events at Bondi. If you do not have the courage to look at yourselves in the mirror and to look the people of this country in the eye and say, 'It is not guns that are the problem; it is radical Islam that is the problem,' then all you are doing is diverting attention and taking away the rights of lawful Australians, whether they be on farms or in metropolitan areas, who have done the right thing by this country, have abided by the law and should not have their rights taken away.”
“We are also going to take away the imports of accessories, so those sporting shooters will not be able to have their Olympic vests that can hold 50 cartridges. There has been no consultation on this. Then we get into the use of a carriage service whereby, if someone—an innocent Australian gun owner—were to download instructions on how to place a scope on their rifle, they would be in breach of this legislation. This is a desperate overreach by a government looking for a political diversion; it's demonising lawful Australians. Do you honestly believe you want to spend a billion dollars—Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania don't want to—buying guns back? Are you that naive that you think the criminals and the terrorists will be the ones that will hand them back? That is not going to solve the problem we have in this nation.”
“These people own a number of guns and are able to undertake that. You cannot own a gun in this country just because you want one. You have to pass a fit-and-proper-person test and wait 28 days. You can't just say, 'I want a high-calibre weapon.' You have to demonstrate a necessity, and you have to be able to prove that. You have to go through training. You actually get inspected every 12 months about that weapon. So the licensing arrangements that we have in place for the weapons and the calibre of weapons that are approved have been proven to work. This is a diversion, a cheap political stunt by this government, who want to divert attention away from the nation's real problems and onto the lawful gun owners of this nation.”
“Some of the weapons that the member for Hunter would use to become an Olympian again—he isn't here at the moment for some reason—would be revoked under that import order. We would also see weapons that are used by primary producers to undertake the pest management that we need absolutely revoked, so this is not going to the heart of the problem. But this is not just about farmers. This is about the people in metropolitan areas as well, the lawful gun owners that actually do a lot of the heavy lifting, the pest management, for farmers. These are the people in Newcastle and the Illawarra that the member for Bendigo talks about. They are lawful gun owners who come out to farms and do that work of pest mitigation. They do that because farmers do not have the energy and the time to be able to do that.”
“We do not have a gun problem; we have a radical Islam problem. The gun laws in this country actually worked, because there was an order by the police that saw perpetrators of that evil act in Bondi on a watchlist. They should not have had their licences in place. If I have a domestic violence order against me in this country, my gun licence and my gun are taken away. This has been a failure of process, not a failure of gun licensing. The fact is that authorities did not act and take away the licence and the weapons as they should have. This legislation goes further. It has implications for the types of firearms that are imported and which are already covered under state legislation. In fact, the overreach we are talking about here will affect some of the pistols that are coming into this country for sporting shooters.”
“Let me make this clear. The National Party and the coalition will be opposing this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. This is nothing more than a cheap political diversion. It's a diversion from facing up to the real problem in this country, which is radical Islamists. They are taking hold and causing harm on the streets, as we saw in Bondi. It is not the gun owners of Australia that have done this; it is radical Islam that has done this. One element of this bill that we will support is the ASIO checks. In fact, we supported a national gun register, which was agreed to nearly two years ago. It could have already been in place if those opposite had put it in place. Instead, what they are trying to do is demonise legal-gun owners for something that was not caused by them.”
“Fifteen innocent Australians have lost their lives. Our Jewish community has been traumatised, and our country has been reshaped. There are really no words of comfort that I or any of us can provide to the families of these victims that will ease their pain, but they should know: this country is with you, and your loss will not be in vain. May they rest in peace.”
“When synagogues were firebombed, we failed them. This cycle of poisonous anti-Jewish hatred must end, otherwise this will all be in vain. Antisemitism must be irradicated, and radical Islam must be irradicated. I grew up in an Australia where it didn't matter whether you were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish or anything in between, so long as you contributed to your community and you contributed to our country. We celebrated the richness of faiths, and that's the Australia we must fight to regain. We are the custodians of the Australia that we inherited and a society that has drifted into a dark place, which we must have the honesty to face up to—to what it has become—and have the courage to fix it and to hand an Australia to the next generation that we're proud of. Today we pay our respects to the lives which were stolen at Bondi.”
“Today we honour each of the 15 Australians who have sadly lost their lives in a sinister and vile terrorist atrocity, which should never have happened. What unfolded at Bondi is the human toll of antisemitism. This is the human toll of inaction, where antisemitic hatred is allowed to fester. This is the human toll of Islamic terrorism, a threat fuelled by an extreme religious ideology embedded with violence and intolerance. For 2½ years, Jewish Australians have warned and pleaded for us to act against this scourge of antisemitic hatred that has been allowed to spread, and for that we have failed them. When Jewish childcare centres need to be patrolled by armed guards, we have failed them. When Jewish students are intimidated on university campuses, we have failed them. When Jewish businesses were boycotted, we failed them.”
“In the aftermath of this shattering act of evil, today is a meaningful moment for this parliament to remember and honour all those innocent souls who were cruelly taken away. We honour 10-year-old Matilda, a ray of sunshine who will be remembered by her family as a girl who loved to laugh, dance and sing. We honour the generous souls like Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was cherished by his community for his graciousness and whose funeral I had the absolute honour of attending. We honour the bravery of Boris and Sofia Gurman, a couple who were both lost while trying to stop the gunmen. We honour the boldness of Reuven Morrison, who went down as he confronted the terrorists, armed with just a brick. And we honour the sacrifice of those Australians who died while shielding their loved ones from this act of terror.”
“For one of this nation's most iconic places to have been assaulted in the most heinous way has shaken our belief in what it is to be Australian and what it is to live in Australia, a nation that until now has been far from this type of terror. As the sun began to set in the early evening of Sunday 14 December, the shores of Sydney's Bondi Beach had been throughout that afternoon a scene of bliss and enjoyment. It was Chanukah by the Sea. It was an occasion for the Jewish community and for families, for children and for locals of all ages to come together and light up the famous Bondi beachfront in a celebration of humanity and faith. As the time approached 7 pm, horrifically, two Islamic terrorists unleashed a barrage of bullets which transformed what had been a scene of peace and grace into a scene of cold blooded terror.”
“Australia was violated in the most egregious way on that day by pure evil that has left a scar on our nation. Ultimately, it is for us not to let this become a footnote in our history but instead to have the courage to make it a defining moment—as an enduring legacy to those lives lost, to eradicate this type of evil from our country. There have been only two times in my life that I have seen fear in the eyes of the people of western Queensland. The first was the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the second was on 14 December 2025. Many people not just in western Queensland but across Australia think of Bondi as this iconic, if not mythical, part of Australia that most of us only ever dream of visiting.”
“On behalf of the Nationals, it's with great sorrow that I rise to grieve with this parliament for the 15 Australians that were tragically lost at Bondi Beach in what was a horrifying terrorist attack targeting our nation's Jewish community. Our thoughts remain with all those who were injured, and we offer our gratitude for those acts of incredible bravery that we saw during this moment of terror—the bravery of our first responders and the bravery of those Australians who acted heroically to save the lives of others. We commend the courage of heroes like Ahmed al-Ahmed, who put his life on the line. He disarmed a terrorist and he saved the lives of countless others. But what unfolded last month was a despicable act of antisemitic terror.”
“But, unfortunately, we are going down a path that is taking this nation back to being a poorer one where Australia will be left behind. That is an ideology that has not met the practical reality and the lived experiences that Australians feel today or will feel into the future. The day of reckoning is coming very soon.”
“This is where there needs to be some acknowledgement from those opposite that, while ideologically it seemed great and was a great idea at the time, the reality is that the lived experience of every Australian will be that, whether they be employers or at the household level, they will be paying the bill. They would be paying a bill that is not necessary. If we drew on the resources of this country and had an energy grid that did not rely on just one energy source but a number that gave baseload power and the ability to compete internationally, then Australians wouldn't have to fear for their jobs. There would be a future for artificial intelligence. There would be a future for data centres in this country.”
“We're going to bring in a tariff.' The technical term is a carbon border adjustment mechanism, but, for us, it's a tariff. It's a tariff on like products that are being imported into this country so that we can make our industry competitive. But guess what? That's inflationary. That means that everything, like cement, steel and aluminium and also things like fertiliser and agricultural inputs, therefore herbicides and pesticides, goes up in price. That means your food bill goes up. That means your ability to build a house goes up. That means that you pay more. This is where their ideologies are meeting the practical realities of what Australians are having to bear. This is where there needs to be some courage.”
“The safeguards mechanism was put in place by the coalition because it was about utilising technology, rather than taxes, to get to an emissions reduction. But it wasn't a stick; it was a carrot. This government has imposed a stick. If you can't impose a technology that doesn't even exist, you have to buy offsets. So that five per cent every year is a cost that gets put onto the consumer, and guess what happened? This government is now saying that next year they're going to broaden the safeguards mechanism, which means businesses across the economy are going to have to pay a tax that will be passed on to the Australian consumer. But don't worry. They've done a deal with business industry groups, and they're going to say: 'We know that's going to make industry in this country even more uncompetitive, so we're going to square the ledger.”
“It is an important part of every energy grid, but it shouldn't be greater than what it needs to be, because it's going to push your energy bills up. These are the economics, the physics, the environmental and the social impacts of this reckless race to an all-renewables approach. Let me tell you, there are a couple of chestnuts coming along on top of this that the Australian public need to be aware of. We heard from Senate estimates today that there is not only a $300 carbon tax coming our way but also this thing called the safeguards mechanism that has been weaponised by those opposite. It says to the top 219 emitters that they must reduce their emissions by five per cent every year between now and 2023 or they can utilise technology.”
“Just a little number for the minister to understand—while there might be 70,000 or 80,000 households taking it up, there are over 17 million households in this country, and most of them can't afford the other two-thirds you've got to fork out for a battery, so bully for them. The poor old pensioner out there is never going to afford a battery, but they're going to have to continue to pay their electricity bill. It also doesn't include the extra 15 gigawatts of gas that needs to be developed and put into the grid. So those opposite understand, your energy bill is determined by your highest input cost. The highest input cost is gas, and the more you have to put gas in, the higher your energy bill goes up.”
“We're destroying the very thing we're saying we're there to protect, but we're also tearing up this nation's food security and we are pushing up your food prices, all for an ideology. The greens actually understand—not these Greens but the green conservation movement—but the ideology of this government doesn't. They're also talking about 45,000 kilometres of new roads. Well, I'm from western Queensland. We'd just like some potholes filled in on the highways we've already got. We don't need to build new roads. And let me tell you, that $1.382 trillion doesn't include the transmission lines, and it doesn't include the battery program that the minister talked about today that 70,000 or 80,000 are signed up to.”
“The human toll for Mount Isa alone—17,000 people would have been impacted by that smelter going under. That's the human toll of the decisions that this government is making. They're putting people out of their jobs. At some point, the subsidies are going to have to stop, because you know what? What this mob doesn't understand is that unfortunately Australian taxpayers' money runs out. It's not for them to keep spending. It's for them to understand that they need to fix the fundamentals to keep industry going to allow them to pay the bills in this country. When you think about the impact on our environment—over 430,000 hectares of landscape, both prime agricultural land and native environment, are going to be ripped up.”
“Business has to get a return, and guess who pays? The good old taxpayer. You get that in your bill every quarter. That is the lived experience of Australians—not just heavy industry, with the frightening situation that they are in of potentially losing their jobs. It's what every Australian sees every quarter, every time they open their energy bill. They should see the Prime Minister's and the energy minister's face on that bill every time they open it. Remember that the government promised us that their bills were going to go down $275 this year, based off their 2022 bill. No, they've gone up by $1,300. And the RBA governor belled the cat when she said, 'Not only is that baked in, but it's going to continue to go up.' But there's also the impact, not just the costs that business is saying they can't afford and are uncompetitive.”
“In fact, they are a respected economic house. They put our plan, which had 38 per cent of our grid as nuclear energy, a bit over 50 per cent renewables and the balance as gas and coal, at $331 billion, not $600 billion. But, even at $600 billion, that's less than half of what every Australian is going to have to pay of the $1.382 trillion. That's why we have a government that does not have the courage to face up to the Australian people and tell them exactly what the cost is. What is the cost that the Australian people are prepared to pay? It's not just as governments but also private enterprise, because guess what happens? Private enterprise—they'll come in here and use some mealy words and say, 'We're going to incentivise business to be part of this.' But guess what? Business has to be paid back.”
“Only this week, Rainforest Reserves, which is not necessarily a card-carrying member of the National Party, let me give you six to four on that, the environmental group, has, for the first time—because the minister for climate change has not even bothered to model, has not even worried about, what sort of impact it would have on not only the cost to your energy bill but also the environment—has done the meticulous work, and it has been costed at $1.382 trillion. An opposition member: How much? Trillion—$1.382 trillion! Just cast your mind back to the election campaign and the scare campaign that the Prime Minister ran, talking about a $600 billion nuclear plan. At least we had Frontier Economics model ours— Government members interjecting— You may laugh. You actually use them in the same way that we do.”
“They got to 77 per cent of renewables, and their entire grid went out for over a week and a half. They had to draw on continental Europe to be able to get their baseload power up and the turbines for their energy generation going again, to give them some hope and to keep their economy going. That is the reckless race that this government is taking us down. But it comes at a cost. It comes at a significant cost.”
“When you are blessed with all the resources here on this continent, why do we have the most expensive energy in the world? That is why we saw, even yesterday, at the National Press Club, BlueScope send another warning to this government about their operations—the thousands of people that BlueScope employs across this country, along with those smelters—that are now at risk. They are simply being bailed out, with dollar after dollar, year after year, because we have not had the courage to face up to fixing the fundamentals. And this government is continuing to go down that path of an all-renewables approach. There is no industrial country the size of Australia that has gone down an all-renewables path. There are a couple that have had a red-hot crack at it: Portugal and Spain.”
“During the election campaign we heard ad nauseam about a future made in Australia. There were $38 billion worth of programs to say that we're going to make everything here in Australia. It is nothing more than an expensive slogan. The lived experience of industry across this country today is that it has now cost them over $3 billion in bailouts to try and keep industry alive, because this government has worked on slogans rather than fixing the fundamentals of what makes us competitive and what keeps industry going. It's not just heavy industries in Port Pirie, Mount Isa and Whyalla; it's also the new emerging industries like artificial intelligence and data centres where you need baseload power and cheap, affordable energy that will be there when you need it to be able to compete.”
“My question is to the Treasurer. A single US private company owned by a US church was able to purchase almost $500 million of Australian prime agricultural land in around six months without the requirement of oversight from the Treasurer or the Foreign Investment Review Board. Will the Treasurer commit to review the thresholds put into effect 20 years ago to give farming families an opportunity to compete in buying Australian farms?”
“My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Can the minister confirm that the Inspector General of Biosecurity's recommendations that import risk assessments should include the oversight of a scientific advisory panel were implemented in the decision to overturn US beef import bans? If not, why not?”
“My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Can the minister confirm whether Australia's biosecurity requirements from today's announcement to import US beef will be at least to the equivalent to the biosecurity requirements that Australian beef must meet to be imported into the US?”
“That shows absolute contempt—and a Western Australian sits here and doesn't even have the courage to stand up for her fellow Western Australians, cannot even explain the science or economics of why they have called out and destroyed live sheep exports out of Western Australia. Where is the courage of the Western Australians? They have gone missing in their moment of truth, when they condescendingly sit here and talk about what's important in this country.”
“That's a government that went to the last election and did not even promise one cent in new programs, for programs that they have cut—did not say they would reintroduce or refund any of them. They went to regional Australia at this election and said, 'You get nothing.' That is the contempt that this government has held for regional Australians—the fact that we are contributing to this country's wealth yet having the tools taken away from us by a government that is looking for political expediency in capital cities, worried about fighting the Greens and winning seats off the Greens and not thinking about those who are generating the wealth of this country.”
“Again yesterday we heard this government and the Prime Minister reiterate what he said when he was first elected: no-one held back, no-one left behind. Well, that's unless you live in regional Australia, because, since the Albanese government came into power in 2022, we have seen over $30 billion worth of infrastructure ripped out of regional Australia. That's roads, that's rail, that's dams. That's about the tools regional Australia needs in order to give this country over $350 billion worth of exports. This government has callously just said to regional Australia that there are two classes of Australians: there's one that lives in a capital city and there are those of us who live outside a capital city, who can do without. That is not a government that is governing for all.”
“My question is to the Assistant Treasurer. Can the Assistant Treasurer clarify how Labor's super tax on unrealised capital gains would operate for a farmer who has their farm held in a self-managed superannuation fund, when they've had a failed season with no income?”
“I have the honour to inform the House that the Nationals have elected me as leader and the honourable member for Page as deputy leader. The honourable member for Capricornia has been appointed the Nationals Chief Whip, and the honourable member for Hinkler has been appointed the deputy Nationals whip.”
“You served in this role with such dignity in the last parliament, and we are proud to have supported you. The fact that there has been bipartisan support for you, and in nominating you, is a reflection on you—one that we are proud of, that your family should be proud of and that this nation should be proud of. Congratulations.”
“And I respect what you have done, as the former Speaker, in not forgetting any part of this country, in taking this parliament—their house—to them, to the most remote parts, coming to Longreach in my electorate and sitting with the School of Distance Education, talking to kids on remote stations who would only ever dream of coming to Canberra but had the Speaker of the House there—and in such a dignified way, a way that embraced them in their understanding of the important role that you play and that we play. And you went to the small school at Muttaburra and on to a local establishment—where you probably got an education of the local gossip, more than we wanted! But that is what it is to take this great parliament to this great nation—all parts of it.”
“Mr Speaker, on behalf of the National Party—and myself personally, as a friend—congratulations, mate. As someone who started with you in 2016 and spent many plane rides with you, down from Brisbane to Canberra and back, I can say that we became good mates, and I'm very proud of your ascension to this role. As well as our friendship, I have respect for your professionalism, even on an international delegation to India, the first one we ever did, with the Prime Minister, Senator Hanson and the former member for Moore—an eclectic bunch! We were in India for 10 days. We were able to get to know one another and understand one another better.”
“I would also say to every Australian that the other silver lining is that, as we come into our tourist season for Winton Shire, Longreach, Quilpie and Birdsville, from Easter onwards you will be able to get out and spend your dollars in the Queensland outback. We need you to go out there. We need you to spend a dollar. The federal government, state government and local government are doing all they need to to make sure you can do that safely.”
“on indulgence—I thank the Prime Minister and, in particular, Senator McAllister for the proactive way that they've dealt not just with me but with the local community. This morning I spoke to the mayor of Winton Shire, Cathy White, who assured me that all is being done at a state and federal level and that they were confident that, despite some damage to many stations out there, much of the benefit of this will come after the water recedes; it has been dry. In fact, one station hand said that for the first time they had to use a calculator to work out the amount of rain they've received, they've had so much rain. There is a silver lining to this, and everything has been done.”
“We will back local solutions to provide flexible access to child care for families living outside the major cities, and we will make it easier to see a GP by bringing in more doctors, specialists and nurses to rural communities by providing more incentives to work in the regions. This is the coalition's commitment to regional Australia. It's all part of our ambition and our comprehensive plan to end the Labor rot and to get regional Australia back on track.”
“We will provide the workforce that our primary producers need by reinstating the ag visa and fixing the PALM Scheme. We will sustainably fund our biosecurity system with an import container levy instead of taxing farmers. We'll protect our prime agricultural land from being destroyed by ideological renewable projects, and we'll stop water buybacks. We will reverse the disgraceful ban on live sheep exports. We'll invest in essential infrastructure, like water sewerage and roadworks, to build more housing across our nation, and we will stop foreigners from competing with Australians at auctions on a Saturday.”
“Our nation urgently needs to change course. Australia deserves new leadership, a vision and a new government that has the right priorities for the regions—a new government that can fix the basics and restore some common sense. On this side of the House, the coalition is ready to govern and ready to deliver. A coalition government will provide the economic leadership that's needed in regional Australia to ease the cost-of-living pressures and to get a fair deal for consumers and farmers at the check-out. We'll bring down energy prices by unlocking our massive reserves of Australian gas and invest in a balanced long-term energy plan. We'll secure regional Australia's fair share of funding by properly investing in roads, rail, local infrastructure and water.”
“We've seen the impacts of this policy reverberate, with the WA sheep flock declining by 25 per cent last year and more production in the state—which is intrinsically linked to live exports—at its lowest level in a century. Then there's Labor's inept transition package—the sort of package that allocates $2.3 million to a media company based in the USA to promote the closure of Australia's live sheep trade, while not a single cent of transition funding has gone to helping an impacted farmer. This insanity and cruelty must stop. On behalf of the federal coalition, I reaffirm our ironclad commitment that, if elected to government, we will legislate to reinstate the live sheep export industry. Over the course of its first term in office, reinforced by four disastrous budgets, the Albanese Labor government has failed regional Australia.”
“But when it comes to the scale of the pain, anguish and trauma being inflicted on farmers right now by the Albanese government, their harmful policy to shut down the live sheep export industry in Western Australia is a shameful stand-out. As this government continues to push ahead with this appalling measure to end what is a lawful and sustainable industry, all over rural WA, we are seeing the consequences and the human toll. We've seen world-leading animal welfare standards abandoned, the science ignored, a botched consultation process, abattoirs actually closing down, jobs being lost, trading relationships threatened and innocent livelihoods thrown into turmoil.”
“As soon as it was announced, the biosecurity protection levy copped a fierce and universal backlash led by the agricultural sector and the coalition. As soon as the legislation was established, this levy was withdrawn from the Senate earlier this year because of the resounding victory of strength from Australian farmers and the coalition. We fought hard against this disgraceful new tax, and we are pleased that we were able to deliver a good outcome. In stark contrast to the wrong approach of those opposite, the coalition government will substantially fund Australia's biosecurity system by targeting the risk-creators: the importers. We'll do this by introducing an import container levy, as recommended by the independent Craik biosecurity review. This is the sensible way forward to fund biosecurity in this country.”
“Despite driving our nation's wealth and feeding the world, there's virtually nothing in this budget for our primary producers. The Treasurer couldn't even utter the word 'farmer'. The government's lack of action on agriculture only highlights their ongoing mismanagement of this portfolio. One glaring omission from last night's budget is the absence of Labor's failed biosecurity protection levy. First announced in the 2023 budget, this $150 million fresh food tax proposed slugging Australian producers with a levy that would make them pay for the biosecurity costs of their international competitors to bring their products to this country. What sort of government would do that to their own farmers?”
“Building on the billions of dollars that was ripped out of water infrastructure in the early budgets, the Albanese government has yet again deferred $190 million in funding for crucial project such as the Paradise Dam Improvement Project, the Hughenden Irrigation Project and the Big Rocks Weir project. All the while, in our nation's food bowl, the government continues to hide the cost of the Murray-Darling Basin. What Labor doesn't understand is that, when you take away infrastructure for water, you take away the future of our communities in regional Australia. Last night's budget was a deeply disappointing one for Australian agriculture. Although the budget papers show that the production value of agriculture, fisheries and forestry is projected to be worth $98 billion in 2025-26, this government can only throw a few crumbs their way.”
“Of the $17.1 billion claimed to be for new infrastructure investment, only 0.7 per cent of the so-called new infrastructure announcements will be delivered next year in 2025-26, and only 10.7 per cent of infrastructure funding announced in the budget is over the forward estimates. Meanwhile, when it comes to road funding, it appears that this government plans to short-change the states by $1.1 billion a year, with a further $273 million cut in 2025-26 compared to last year's budget. We've just covered the damage done by this budget to infrastructure. Looking over to the water portfolio, there is similar carnage.”