Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (18:10): It gives me great pleasure to stand to contribute tonight on behalf of the Nationals and on behalf of every single senator, I think, on the coalition government benches to back this budget in. This is not just a budget for blokes, as the other side wants to make it out to be; this actually is a budget for everyone. As I was reading the motion here before us, it's the trite structure of the sentence; it's reverting to type—pull out your Marxist doctrine, flip to page 6—the righties are only in it for the millionaires! I'll tell you what the righties are actually in it for: we're in it for every single Australian—working men and women, young people and people from rural and regional Australia, who I've been sent here to represent. Senator Thorpe, I welcome you to the Senate from our home state of—well, the 'Republic of Dan-estan' at the moment—a beautiful place called Victoria. But it is disappointing that you have so quickly picked up the baton of rhetoric from the Greens and want to attack every single thing that rural and regional Australians stand for. What we do in terms of supporting our families is that we are the miners, the foresters, the manufacturers and the farmers. We care for our environment, we care for our communities and we care for our families. It is COVID-19 that has wrought absolute havoc on regional and rural communities right across the country, not just in Victoria. We've had the ravages of drought, we've had the horrors of bushfire, we've had the lockdown of COVID-19 and, for those rural and regional communities that have been in border towns, it's been absolutely horrific to see the resultant economic and social impact of the city-centric decision-making by our state premiers. We need a strong vision of recovery, one that provides confidence to families right across our nation. That resilience that drives regional Australians is indeed felt right throughout our community. I believe that the budget handed down by Josh Frydenberg last night absolutely delivers in spades on that account. Instead of terming it as expanding 'dirty' gas and giving billions in corporate handouts, I think the Treasurer made it very, very clear, that our No. 1 sole outcome we're seeking from this budget and our recovery from the pandemic is about jobs. That's local jobs—local jobs for our young people, getting them in as apprentices; assisting women back into the workforce; and supporting the millions of small business men and women right across this country who are the very heart of our local communities. Whether you're in a regional city, such as Bendigo, or whether you're in a country town, such as Benalla, or, indeed, the suburbs of our great cities, it is the small business community that has really borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are the ones that will drive our economic recovery; they are the ones who will employ. No matter how big you want to make the Public Service or the charitable organisations that drive certain areas of your political campaigns, at the end of the day you have to accept the fact that the vast majority of Australians earn their living working for a small to medium enterprise. We need to support these enterprises and that's what our budget does. When you say we're giving corporate handouts to the big end of town, you haven't actually listened to a word our government has said or read the budget papers. The reality is that, with regard to the instant asset write-off announced by the Treasurer, I've had call after call after call, email after email after email to my office from farmers and small businesses right throughout Australia saying what a boon this will be to them. Do you know what that will mean? It'll mean they will be able to keep their employees on the books. It'll mean that small business will be able to pay their bills and local economies will be supported. That is how we're going to recover from the horrors that this global pandemic has wrought on our national economy. You say 'dirty gas'. Gosh, dirty gas, hey? What is it? Dirty coal, dirty gas— An honourable senator interjecting— Senator McKENZIE: There we go. Thank you, Senator, I'll take that interjection. What we want to see is advanced manufacturing grow and prosper in this country. Right now, 32 per cent of our manufacturing workforce is located in rural and regional areas. We want to see that workforce expanded. Industrial relations are sometimes an issue, as is the cost of electricity, which is one of the main input costs for manufacturing. Any break in the reliability of electricity supply can cost tens of thousands of dollars, even if electricity is off for only few seconds. That is the reality of running a manufacturing plant, whether it be in food or fibre, in mineral production or in defence manufacturing. That is a fact. I'm not making it up because of my ideology. It's science, and you can't selectively pick pieces of scientific knowledge to suit your ideological purposes. If we want to grow manufacturing in this country, if we want people to be employed in regional Australia, we need to back sourcing cheap, reliable energy. That means doing things that we have promised to do, like assessing the cost-benefit analysis of a coal fired power station at Collinsville. It also means backing in expanding our gas market to ensure that our manufacturing industries have access to affordable and reliable power. It's that simple. We believe that this is the way forward, and it will have the additional benefit of lowering emissions. Right now, we import a lot of stuff from overseas that is not produced using renewable energy or gas. It's not produced using the beautiful high-calorific black coal of Central Queensland, but its production comes with very, very high emissions. If you were honest with yourselves and accepted the science, you would choose to support local manufacturing and not imports. Out in the regions, we have a nearly $280 billion mining industry and a $60 billion agriculture industry. We want to be not just exporting raw product to the markets of the world but adding value at home to create highly sustainable, rewarding careers in the advanced manufacturing sector going forward. It's a big push in our budget, and I'm very, very proud to be part of a government that is backing in that part of our economy, because we've seen a significant decrease in manufacturing, from being nearly 30 per cent of our economy down to around five per cent. That's not a good thing. I want to see more manufacturing, as does everybody in the National Party. Our emissions reduction strategy is focused on technology, not on taxes. We think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can support our community and our country to recover from COVID-19 through this budget, we can get people employed and we can also reduce emissions to fulfil our international targets. This is central to our ongoing economic recovery. A gas fired recovery is a key component of our JobMaker plan, while we are building a robust and competitive gas industry with lower prices and lower emissions, because gas will be a critical enabler of Australia's economy. Our technology investment road map will guide the deployment of $18 billion of government investment between now and 2030, including through the CEC, ARENA, the Climate Solutions Fund and the Clean Energy Regulator. The road map will drive at least $50 billion worth of investment through the private sector, state governments, research institutions and publicly funded bodies, supporting 130,000 jobs. That is great news. As you can see, our side of the chamber is focused on supporting hardworking Australians, particularly those in our regions. We're focused on new technologies to create jobs and, at the same time, cutting emissions and power bills. You can do it all. It will be okay. You don't need to ruin people's lives and livelihoods to pursue your emissions reduction targets. The Nationals in government will continue to support mature technologies where there is clear market failure, like the shortage in dispatchable generation we are seeing at the moment.