Barnaby Joyce
New England · Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party · Australia
“Why do you believe that you can match the political, personal and religious philosophies just by reason of them arriving in Australia? It's not correct. It doesn't work. I'm not an imbecile. I'm not a racist.”
“Can you explain why we exist in this netherworld, where we talk up and down and around about the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA without ever mentioning their name? We know what's going on here. Why do we play this stupid game?”
“I have great respect for the member for Bruce, and I want it known that I genuinely think that the member for Bruce has his heart in the right place on this. What I do believe is that we have to understand the political dynamic that is currently before us.”
“There's a range of things I believe need to be addressed in this. We've just had a 0.6 per cent fall in productivity in Australia, and agriculture has a major part to play if we want to turn that around. That fall was premised before any effects of the Iran crisis came through, so I imagine right now it's worse.”
“Si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want to have peace, prepare for war. That was by a bloke by the name of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, but you can just call him Vegetius; that's how he was known. Of course, that could have been said by Plato, by Thucydides, by Dwight Eisenhower or by Winston Churchill.”
“You must abide by those guardrails. Home Affairs, where he is responsible, must make sure that those guardrails remain intact. Do you see any problem with any other philosophy that comes into our nation? Do you ever step aside from political correctness and say: 'No, that is not acceptable.”
The complete record
Every one of 204 lines we hold for Barnaby Joyce, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 5.
“One of the great mechanisms for advancement—once more, going back to guys—of Aboriginal guys in more north-western New South Wales and even southern Queensland, right down to Dubbo, is something that was created by the state. It works, and it's called Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School. It's the second-biggest boarding school in Australia after St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill. So many Aboriginal boys go there and become men. Later on you see them in very successful and fulfilling lives wherever they need to go. They go into trades. Some go to uni. It works. Whatever is happening at that boarding school in Tamworth, it works. So why do we just do it once? By the way, why is there only a blokes one? Where's the girls boarding school that does the same job? Where is it?”
“I base that on so many of these other programs. They've been going on for decades, and their lives don't change. But I do find a whole heap of people making a bucketload of money down here from them. I find that. There's no doubt about that. You see the departments. That's why, in certain areas, the cynicism builds up. The biggest Aboriginal community in my area is Tingha, where Nathan Blacklock and Preston Campbell came from. Only 15 per cent of them voted for the Voice. Why? I think it was more of a pushback. They're so cynical now that they just don't think that these things are really going to make a difference to their lives. So let's look for what works. Let's look for the backtracks that work. I'll give you something that works brilliantly in our area but they never did again.”
“It's just ticking a box about things they are going to say. They don't actually reside in the area in such a form that they can actually grab hold of the problem and follow it through to a conclusion and a solution that they, the people who came in the SUVs, would be prepared to live with. My issue with this is that I get a sense of another lot of money about to be kicked out the door, and the actual determination of an outcome, your KPIs, won't be there. I get a sense from this that it's driven from Canberra, not from community. I get a sense that it's just a gathered heap of politically correct terms and bromides that have to be said. Yet, for the kid growing up on a backstreet in Tingha—the heritage from the Bassendean missionary—will their life be better? I don't know—probably not, I presume.”
“But, if we get too tied up in saying, 'Our perspective of what we believe is culturally appropriate, as determined from Canberra, is going to work in Woolbrook, Cunnamulla or Moree,' it won't. What you'll see is the money spent. I can go to certain areas where they have what they call 'support agencies'. In some of the communities that I go to, 20 or 30 people turn up in cars. They drive around. They chat to everybody or some people, and then they jump in their hired SUV, and off they go. That's it. It costs a lot of money to have those people wandering around. If you go back to the community and say, 'What did that do for you?' the answer is: 'Nothing. It was pointless.' Someone comes in with their clipboard and goes through the ritualistic clatter about Aboriginal issues that they don't even believe or earnestly think.”
“It way overcomplicates something that can be done by a more targeted investment to the areas that actually work. Vikki does a bit of work here too for young girls. People will say, 'Oh, you do that; it's patronising,' and all that stuff. No, it's not. It's essential to actually show people how to shop—just saying, 'You don't buy that.' You take them around with a shopping trolley and say, 'This is the stuff you buy, and that's why.' And we'll show them the structure of a house—this is the time you get up and this is the time you go to bed. People stay in the houses with you—just living with a family and seeing the structure of a family. Once more, people say that it's patronising. No, it's not. People love it. They understand that they get a sense of a life they probably haven't lived.”
“When you go back to the ablutions blocks at night after you've finished work, there's structure—your towel goes there, your soap goes there, and we all have to use this area, so it must be clean. At the start, there's always pushback. A lot of people get referred to them from the courts. There's pushback and cheek. Very quickly, they realise that that won't work out in the bush when you're swagging it. In the long term, without going through the rituals of how people are brought into gear, they actually love it. That's because it makes a statement about who they are. They are a man, and they have a position, and they have competency, and they have pride in themselves, and then things work out. We always get frustrated with having a politically correct perspective of sociology and everything else.”
“I'm just a passive observer; the other guys are the role models. That is one of the big things. In so many communities, young guys don't have good male role models. They don't grow up in an environment where they have a reference point of a man who is strong and decent and hardworking and has guardrails of how they exist. I'm not going to name them, because they'll get very upset if I do, and I have to go work with them, but the one thing I always note when the guys are working with these young fellas is they don't muck about. They're not pushovers. They have a very strict code about how things will work, right down to ablutions. At half past seven, you're in the saddle, and that means at half-past seven, you are in the saddle.”
“They certainly had an effect on how I saw the world. What I don't see in the administration of this—I bet you right from the start that it's administered down here in Canberra. That's the first step it gets wrong. If you want to deal with a problem, put the administration and the bureaucracy in the areas where the issue is. You get up close and actually understand it a lot better when it's outside your back door. Look for those within communities, especially when kids go off the rails, who have the capacity to bring them back. I might bring attention to someone that we are involved with, BackTrack and Bernie Shakeshaft, a great guy. I think one of the predominant things of that—it's overwhelmingly money that's given by charity. Bernie does a great job. A lot of the young fellas, the blokes, come down to our place and do cattle work.”
“What always worries me is we seem to throw an inordinate amount of money—I'm a white fella, obviously; I'm not pretending to be anything else but that—towards things that don't have any efficacy, that don't actually result in people's lives changing. Sometimes I genuinely believe we have sort of a political correctness about trying to deal with issues that are so self-evident when you live there. In my time I've lived in Werris Creek, which has a strong Aboriginal community; Moree, and obviously we all know about that; and Charleville, St George and Danglemah, where I grew up and where I still am. Up the road is Woolbrook, and it was like Canberra; Aboriginal people from Gympie to Dubbo would come into those come into those areas. My childhood was spent growing up with Aboriginal people around me.”
“I do look into my conscience about how I deal with one of the largest communities, one of the strongest proportions of Aboriginal people in an electorate in Australia, which is in New England. There are vastly more Aboriginal people in my area. They call themselves Aboriginal, so I will say Aboriginal. There are more Aboriginals than farmers, to be quite frank. I win the booths, and I suppose, in a little way, that is because I grew up in an Aboriginal area. My children, my sons, still go to the state school, which is a black and white school and always has been. We really love it. That's our community. We've known each other for generations, so this is very close to my heart.”
“My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer please inform the House of the cost to the Commonwealth budget for 2025-26 for the Commonwealth's Capacity Investment Scheme? To assist the Treasurer, I believe they should be noted within the quantified contingent liabilities.”
“It is an item, a sort of caveat on this, that we have to take on board, because the last thing we want in Australia is the Balkanisation, the friction and the heat that come where people, by basically the language aspect of what they want, end up in an enclave. It remains in an enclave. It does not have the capacity to engage in a wider form with the Australian culture. Therefore those people within that enclave are sort of diminished in the rights that they have. For the Australian view in public, the nation is diminished in the reward that they can give back to us.”
“I must accept what might be not my views, but it is part of that egalitarian nature of Australia that I leave other people alone to live their lives. I live mine. There's also the expectation that people who come here have to comply with that as well. You cannot say, 'Well, what I want in Australia is a culture that reflects where I came from.' No. If you come to Australia, you must have a culture that reflects where you are not where you came from. It is swayed by different views. It is accepted. It is moved by different ingredients, but it cannot be holistically changed into something that's entirely different. I put that before the chamber.”
“Australian culture by its very nature does not ask what religion you are, what creed you are or what colour you are. But it asks that you comply within guardrails of how people act in this nation, and the things that are outside the guardrail you cannot make excuses for on the premise of your religion, your previous culture or filial lines. If you're outside the guardrails, you're outside the guardrails. We don't have to go into the graphic side of it, but I think we can all relate to sections of alternative cultures throughout Australia where things are completely and utterly applicable, completely and utterly acceptable and completely and utterly anathema to what this nation represents. I have to comply with certain things I might disagree with, but I must comply. I must be tempered.”
“They have to be courteous.' This person said: 'How would I know? I can't understand what they're saying.' That this is something that needs to be brought. When I saw this piece of legislation come up, I couldn't help it, but I thought, well, now I'm going to have to ventilate that issue and make sure that, in further requirements in both state and federal acts, if you serve the government and you're paid for by the taxpayer, it is absolutely explicit that you must be able to speak in a form of English that is understandable and that gives you the capacity to do your job and serve others. I don't want to delay the chamber, but I'll close where I started. Australia has to more and more realise that multiculturalism is a great idea, but an Australian culture is essential.”
“But when you have other relatives turning up from other parts of South-East Asia, being part of the community and the family just doesn't work if you can't communicate with them. I saw this bill, and it was something that had been brought to my attention by a constituent that said, 'When you get the opportunity, you must bring to the Australian public's attention that in sections of the public service—and I've quoted to you to the act—there is no requirement to speak English.' They said, 'I have been in that position where I've had a requirement for the person who's serving the government to speak the language of the nation, and they couldn't.' And when the person followed this through, they said, 'Surely there must be a requirement for them to speak English.' And they said: 'No, there's not. They just have to be polite.”
“I think there's a real sense of conceit where we say we'll basically look after you forevermore speaking another language because that's nice. No; that's actually hurting them. What you've got to do is say, yes, you have an issue, and we've got to help you. But the goal is not for you to stay in the language of where you came from. It's absolutely essential that you get to the language of the country that you now live in. A fascinating thing and one of the great gifts of so many people is people who are multilingual and bilingual. I can say not so much now, because people pass on. At my Christmas dinner in the past, when the family got together, 10 languages were spoken around the table when everybody was there. And that is marvellous.”
“What this leads to is enclaves. It also leads to Balkanisation. It leads to misunderstanding. It can lead to friction. Friction can lead to hate, and hate leads to hurt. In Australia, more and more we have to have these discussions, because we can go on this train of saying marvellous things—of saying things that we believe will warrant accolades in this building. But I'll tell you about one commonality between everybody in this building, in this chamber and in the red one across the road, downstairs, is that they all speak English. Every attendant speaks English. Our communication to Australia is in English, and we know that it would be pointless and irrelevant if you couldn't. So if that's what we think is essential for us to do our job, why don't we believe that's essential for anybody else?”
“There is definitely a strong correlation between a key person's inability to speak English and sections who have been exploited, because they can't avail themselves of the protections that are required. Yes, for that you need a translation service, and that's essential, and I'm not saying that, for one section, we don't. But I'm saying that the impetus has always got to be that, in Australia, there has to be a drive for a common language that everybody has. It also has to be part of delivering a unity of purpose in Australia around what we are doing. If we go to an authentic multiculturalism, that, in its authenticity, will also state that you don't have to speak English, because culturally in some areas it's not appropriate. If you want to hold fast to a purist form of your culture, then it doesn't require you to speak English.”
“It has also been brought to my attention that the wording of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 in the Federal Registration of Legislation leaves out the requirement to speak English. So imagine if you're in a position where you are in need of a service and the person who you are dealing with—even though they are paid by the taxpayer—cannot communicate with you. There's something wrong about that. So what do we have to do if we want to eliminate this? It goes both ways, in the provision of service. We need, in Australia, doctors. We need, in Australia, builders. We need, in Australia, teachers. But we need, in Australia, people who have the capacity to come here and immediately segue into the requirements of the services we wish them to be part of.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker Haines, I also want to bring to your attention something that has been brought to mine, and those are the requirements under the Public Service Regulations. I want to go to the Public Service Act 1999 in the Federal Register of Legislation. There is nothing in this that says that you have to speak English. You have to be polite, but you don't have to speak English. This means that, in certain areas where people, taxpayers, have to rely on or be serviced by people who represent the government, there is actually no requirement in the act for them to speak English. Now, I thought that that was bunkum when it was brought to my attention, but I've now found out that it's not. I think that this issue that was brought to my attention is a valid issue that needs to be resolved.”
“Also, in Australia, we have to ask the question on this: regardless of the attributes of a person, they must have the capacity to come to Australia and to become part of it—to be an effective, taxpaying member of this nation. We have two things that we must rely on, as we get ourselves into more debt and as we have more problems in regard to supply constraints on things such as housing: a person who becomes part of the Australian community cannot be in the crime pages and cannot be on social security. We must focus on that. Otherwise, rather than an asset, they become a burden. To become an effective part of the Australian community, it's essential that they have the capacity to communicate with the Australian community. Therefore, English becomes a part of that.”
“So, although we must have a mechanism to assist people who struggle with English, the absolute emphasis must be on speaking English. You must get to a point where you can speak English. If I'm to go to France, I must get to a point where I can speak French. If I'm to go to Thailand, I must get to a point where I can speak Thai. And if you come to Australia, you must get to a point where you can speak English. Sometimes people have romantic views about people in remote Indigenous communities where it's essential that they keep their language, but they think there's something good if they can't speak English. That is terrible, because you've completely ostracised them from the opportunities of Australia. Without the capacity to speak English, there are such limitations.”
“There are no problems with being bilingual. There are no problems with your faith, your creed or your colour. They're absolutely and utterly part and parcel of the egalitarian nature of Australia. But, to maintain that egalitarian nature of Australia and to give people the greatest opportunities, it is essential that they are able to speak English. So many people isolate themselves from all the protections that are warranted in the Australian system because of their inability to speak English. I won't refer to who they are, but there are people who have worked especially on trying to deal with sex slaves in Sydney, and one of the greatest problems they had was that they couldn't speak English and so they couldn't convey the issues that were before them.”
“There is one strong point of difference I have with the previous speaker, and that is that I don't believe in multiculturalism. I believe that there overwhelmingly is an Australian culture and that the Australian culture itself provides guardrails that temper what, in some instances, might be alternative views that work at angles to what is acceptable in Australia. I think that, if you believe all cultures have an equivalence, then, of course, you condone a whole range of things that I and many would find completely and utterly noxious. Being part of the Australian community means that you have to comply with the mores and edicts of what we see as acceptable behaviour. So I come at this from a slightly different position. Part of complying with the Australian culture is the necessity to understand English. It is essential.”
“We'll have a packed-out room full of farmers, and we're going to make sure that these issues and others are covered with the people of Victoria. I look forward to getting down there and making sure that we take their message back to Canberra and fight for them.”
“It's not a multicultural nation; it's an Australian culture. Many cultures may be part of it, but overwhelmingly the guardrails are for the Australian culture. The rollout of intermittent power—the wind turbines, the solar panels—continues to be at the forefront. One Nation has come forward and said, 'Let's build the coal-fired power stations and go back to what actually works.' We now have the BESSs, the battery energy storage systems, and there are fire risks and problems associated with them. Once more, these have been placed in regional areas, not in urban areas, so we do the penance for an urban desire for climate policy, and that is completely unfair. Telecommunications also remains at the forefront. I'd also like to say that this weekend I'll be going to Victoria.”
“We have our right. It's a private right. It's a right of ownership. It's been intruded upon. People really have a problem with the censorship laws, which are masquerading as hate laws, because they see it as the creep of censorship. We know that what would end up being censored is, basically, right-wing views against a left-wing socialist government. We could see this coming, and we didn't want to have these censorship laws placed on us. We will back antisemitic policy 100 per cent. We'll be at the forefront, but we've got to be focused on the antisemitic issues of fundamental Islamic terrorists against Jewish people and not draw in this net of other things. We've had an enormous requirement in our office for new flags, because people believe that we should have an Australian culture.”
“This is my first constituency statement since coming back after the Christmas break, and there are a range of important issues that I want to convey to my electorate and to the Australian parliament. Overwhelmingly, people are very angry about the changes to firearms legislation. They can't understand why their freedoms have yet again been intruded upon when they have never committed a crime. No farmer, no sports shooter, no recreational shooter was part of the outrageous massacre at Bondi Beach, yet we are the people they've come to as they try to placate those who require something to be done. People say, 'Why do you need more than four firearms if you're a recreational shooter?' Well, why do you need more than one bathroom? You've only got one neck—why do you need 12 ties? You have only yourself—why do you need three cars?”
“These are people who have shouldered arms in defence of our nation and have taken on the terrorists in Afghanistan. We shouldn't be querying why they need firearms. They do it because it's their recreation. They're showing their kids. I was looking at this gentleman's kids and I was saying, 'If there was ever a person who's trained to be in the Defence Force, it's that man's son, who no doubt will follow his dad and do an incredibly good job.' Obviously, we need the bill. I'm not certainly not going to hold this up. My whole issue with this bill is that it should have been expedited and already completed by now.”
“I might just say in closing—I know this is tangential, but it's important—that the firearm legislation that was passed the other day is an infringement on this person's rights. These people are good people, and I don't have one; I have a number who come onto our property to go shooting. That's what they do. They bring their families with them—their sons predominantly. We've brought in laws that are going to start putting caveats on their capacity to stand on the land they love and have served and have offered their lives for, and I think that's wrong. I don't agree with the firearms legislation at all, but there should at least have been an amendment in there for ex-service men and women who don't own properties—they're not wealthy people—but go shooting on properties.”
“You wouldn't meet these people unless you had a reserve unit. They still utilise that as their connection. I think that gives people a great sense of psychological attachment to, strength in and resilience for the job they've got to do. Finally, of course, if you've got reserve units, you get regs because people can make the switch over. I just had a gentleman up the other day who was a very distinguished returned servicemen with his son. They were going shooting on our place. I got into discussions with him, as he was camped on our place: 'How'd you get in?' It was via reserves. Then he did a number of tours of Afghanistan. He'd been in East Timor. He's still in the services now, actually, but he got in via the reserves, and that is something we've got to reinvigorate.”
“It should be culturally applicable that people who've been to high school continue on and say, 'You know, I'll just continue on with my service at a reserve depot.' Also it's very important, as I used to say for Veterans' Affairs, that, when you get out of the services, you should step down not out. 'Stepping down' means still having a connection to the culture of the Defence Force, which reserve units gave you. It's also so good for people coming through to be mixing with regs—to be mixing with people who have been in regular service in the Defence Force. That was done by depots. When I was there, there was Sergeant Brett Field; he'd been in Somalia. I had the great honour of being trained by people such as Warrant Officer Perry, who had been a forward scout in Vietnam and was an Aboriginal gentleman.”
“That's how I got into it, going to my local. I used to drive 200 kilometres to parade at Roma—200 at night and 200 kilometres back home, so a 400-kilometre round trip to parade on a Tuesday night—and then go away to do the things you've got to do. But in the end they moved the depot out of Roma. The depot was going to be on Queen Street, Toowoomba. That's 450 kilometres away. That's basically where it all stopped. I was still enlisted, but I couldn't parade. We've got to move those depots back into regional towns. Places like Parkes or Forbes should have a reserve depot.”
“You hear people just screaming at you and throwing your stuff around everywhere and making a noise which is apparently 'left, right, left, right' and marching people here, there and everywhere. How do you break the ice into that? For a lot of people, it's just in your family. There's a family culture. There's an awareness of it because your family has all done it. Unfortunately we had deaths in the family of people that served in wars. But a lot of people just have no connection to the Defence Force whatsoever. Maybe movies would be as close as they get. If we're going to reinvigorate our nation's capacity, it's this holistic view of getting cadet units going again. Cadet units break the ice for people to go into reserve units. We used to have reserve units in regional towns. They're not there, depots.”
“We do not have the storage of fuels to maintain a conflict over a sustained period. If the supply lines are cut—people just have to cut your supply lines and wait for you to run out. That will happen pretty quickly. The big thing is that we seem to have lost the culture of people going into the services. I'll give you a classic example. In the past, high schools had cadet units. They were everywhere; now they're not. There's only a handful of places with cadet units. Sometimes people think, 'Oh, well, you know, we don't have to worry about that.' You do. To go into the Defence Force, as you would understand clearly, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, is quite an experience, especially when you first walk through the gate.”
“The other approach is that you become resilient in your own nature in such a form that you'll never be as strong as the totalitarian power that wishes to put you into a vassal state but strong enough that they wouldn't bother trying. There's too much concern if they try. We are not there. We are not even close to there. We are a thousand miles from there. It's in so many forms that we are weak. For instance, our Collins-class submarines are basically—well, at times, we can't get one into the water. That's your whole platform, and you're not able to basically get one of your ships into the water. Spare parts—we don't make them. So, if you lose a spare part from one of your platforms, it basically becomes defunct. There are fuel supplies and things you don't even think about.”
“I hope that we can understand that our nation, unfortunately, lives in a time when we are going to have stresses placed on us that we've never experienced in our lives, and I don't believe our nation is prepared for them. Obviously, with an assertive China pressuring you into a sort of vassal state relationship, it's going to need resilience for you to stand up against that and push back. You have two approaches to doing that. You can rely totally on the United States of America and believe that your defence policy is them sending their sons and daughters over to our hemisphere to die on our behalf because we weren't ready for it. I'd be very, very worried about that defence policy. That is not a very secure defence policy; that is a very foolish defence policy.”
“If a claim's rejected, it goes back to the start, but it's noted as being processed, even though it's really just amended and it's back in the pile again. We need clarity on exactly where this is and where this processing attachment is at. I acknowledge that it has certainly picked up a lot of the slack that was there—100 per cent. But I don't think it's reached the high notes that we needed it to. As to the streamlining of DRCA, MRCA and VEA, I think that in the end we ended up not with three acts but with four, because DRCA, MRCA and VEA still continue on, and then you've got basically MRCA 2.0, which everybody's going to be part of. Now you've got four. You've got the residue of the previous acts and now the new one that's encompassing them.”
“I don't know who the shadow minister is now, but it has to be prosecuted in a form that says we've got to expedite this thing and bring it to a conclusion. Just in passing, I'd like to apologise. I did not attend the last post ceremony last night, because I was still in my electorate. I just want to put an apology in for that. I most definitely would have been there if I had not been tied up somewhere else. What we also have to acknowledge in this bill is: What is the timeline now for finishing this off? When does this actually come to a conclusion? We have concerns about the processing of claims and the mechanism whereby they process them, where they say, 'Oh, we're getting through the claims,' but then we found that what they're actually doing is duck-shoving things sideways.”
“They accept that, if you're back on civvy street, you're back on civvy street. But, if there are afflictions and things that need to be dealt with, they want it dealt with respectfully and promptly. That is what this bill is about: dealing with things respectfully and promptly. There were a range of recommendations when I was shadow veterans' affairs minister, and I, on behalf of the coalition, was doing my very best to work hand in glove with the minister, because we wanted this to be non-contro. We wanted this through. But we're still talking about it. This has been going on now for years, and it should already be done. It should be finished. It should be complete. What are we in? 2026. So this is something that's got to be prosecuted.”
“The world has not changed. Reference point 1 is Vladimir Putin and what's happened in Ukraine. Reference point 2 is the growth of totalitarianism, as exhibited quite clearly by communist China. Reference point 3 is the Middle East. Reference point 4—and on you go. Human nature has not changed. You're always going to need a strong defence force, and, if you want a strong defence force, you've got to put all the promises out there at the start to exhibit a sense of, 'Show your patriotism; sign up.' There's a quid pro quo to that, which is, on the way out, gratitude for your service. We look after you. It is not beyond the pale. It's not that everybody has to bow and scrape and you get everything for free. No, I don't think any returned service men or women or ex-service men or women want that.”
“You sign on the dotted line to offer your life for your nation, and then, at the end, it's, 'See you later.' Dad always said, 'When I got out of hospital'—after his fifth or sixth or 10th operation—'they literally just parked my wheelchair on the side and said, "Well, if your family can come and pick you up, that would be great."' With the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures No. 2) Bill 2025, you've got to understand that this is seminal. Veterans' Affairs is something that most people know nothing about, but, for the people who are involved with it, it's absolutely core, because it's a reflection of gratitude by the nation for the service they have offered. If you don't have service men or women, you don't have a defence force, and if you don't have a defence force, you don't have a nation. You will lose it.”
“You're turning over places worth millions of dollars. Why would you worry about whether it's $40 or $60?' And I remember him abruptly saying, 'You give me back my leg, and I'll give you back your 20 bucks.' It was something that he'd held on to. When he passed away, we found an account that had all his pension money in it; he'd never spent a cent of it and had just put it in an account. I don't know why. It was something he argued about but never actually used. What it shows is the depth of feeling—you've got to understand that—that veterans have about their service. They get a sense that, in many instances, they were just sort of kicked out the door.”
“I acknowledge that obviously you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, served. Obviously it runs in families a bit. Both my grandfathers served; my father served, and I served in the reserves. Veterans affairs was such a fundamental part of the iconography of the family—a bizarre anger sometimes and an attachment to their service. My father was repatriated during the Second World War; he was smashed up. He became a very successful person in business, but I remember he would spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about his pension. At the time he'd become a little bit serious. He wasn't easy going, but things never fussed him. But he would get a little bit angry when he was arguing about his pension. I can't remember the exact form of the conversation, but it was something like: 'Dad, you've done so well in life.”
“It was Slim Dusty who said, '… there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer.' But there is. It's to stand at the bar of a pub with no patrons. If we don't start doing something about the cost of the fundamental core reason why people go to a hotel, there won't be patrons there because the obvious place to be will be to stand at the bottle shop with the slab with no fear, rather than the pub with no beer. Where the local hotel resides is embellished in the Australian psyche. We talk about it in everything from Crocodile Dundee to 'Priscilla of the desert'—what's that one?”
“This is the time where they spend just a short period of time with their friends. But now we're seeing less and less of that because the costs have become exorbitant in this cost-of-living crisis. The cost-of-living crisis has exacerbated the pressure that's been put on these hotels. Once more, if you go out to some of these regional areas like Foxtrap—west of Charleville—or Adavale, without a hotel, there's just nothing. There is nothing there at all. A part of the cultural fabric of this nation will be removed. So, yes, this amendment is substantial. It's removing the excise in total for what's been consumed in a hospitality venue—a removal in total. I fervently believe that we have the capacity to pay for this by the offsets in other areas, such as the fanciful idea—”
“As each one turns up, they think they are going to make a buck out of it but, unfortunately, they then have to peel out after a short period of time because the tragic reality of their commercial circumstances become apparent—that they just can't survive. You're not going to survive in a local hotel in a country town with two or three patrons. You have to have that capacity, especially during the 4.30 to 8.00 session—I used to work in a hotel—to get those customers through, who are basically working families—working men and women—who have their four or five pots then they're out; they've gone home. It's easy. It's clean. They're a great clientele, so you're happy to have them within the premises because you know that they're going to go home, that they're going to go to bed. This is their recreation.”
“If you keep on putting up the excise on beer and keep on putting up the excise on wines and think that you're not going to double up on that process, well, you will, and this is not conducive to a healthy society or to a society that allows communities to bind together at one common point. In the past in a lot of country towns we used to have post offices. They were closed. We used to have train stations. They were closed. We used to have police stations. Sometimes they get them; mostly they are closed. Many medical facilities are not there, and the one thing that's sort of been maintained is the local hotel. But what we are seeing now is a rolling of new owners into these hotels.”
“In the past, we have just kept on increasing excises to the point where the product basically became unviable. A classic example of that, to the detriment of Australia and to the detriment of many towns, is illicit tobacco. It's just everywhere. We've successfully created the new Al Capones of 2026 with the illicit tobacco industry. How have we created them? We've created them by putting the tobacco excise and price up so high. We sort of had a foot in both camps—we wanted the money from it yet we told people they shouldn't do it—and we created the criminal gangs that now operate it.”