Ms SWANSON (Paterson) (16:07): As familiar as the member for Leichhardt is with ancient history, he is sadly misinformed and sprouting his own nonsense on this matter of public importance on regional Australia. There are two droughts in this country: the main climatic drought and a drought of leadership. We constantly hear the rhetoric that Labor can't manage money and that the government are the only ones who can manage the Treasury benches. Well, I say that the government can't be trusted with money, they can't be trusted with power and they certainly cannot be trusted with governing the people of Australia. Nowhere is this more important than in our regional, rural and remote centres. The problems of Australia are magnified in these places. The challenges we face in rural and regional Australia are absolutely magnified and multiplied by the challenges this government puts forward. They have abandoned governing for regional Australia. In fact, their whole modus operandi is to get out of the way. They regularly talk about small government, about doing nothing. They're pulling back, sitting on their hands, just waiting to see whether things will work out—with climate change, with the economy. They are the epitome of a do-nothing government. From the Reserve Bank of Australia to the banks of dry rivers and dams across this country, we are hearing the cries for leadership, for strategy, for plans—but for more than that: for infrastructure. Today I could not believe my ears when I heard the Deputy Prime Minister say, 'We're going to build a dam'—we're going to do that. This is a government in its third term. What have they been going to do? Ms Madeleine King: Gonna, gonna, gonna. Ms SWANSON: I take the interjection from the member for Brand and shadow minister for trade: gonna, gonna, gonna. In fact, in regional Australia there are plenty of properties I've seen called 'Gonna'—and 'Weowna', if they've paid off their mortgage. They're very clever, the people of regional Australia, with what they call their properties. But, seriously, people are shaking their heads. They just don't understand why, in a country like Australia—where we have organisations like the CSIRO, who are leading the science on this, who are saying, 'We've got the ideas; we can do it'—this government does not govern. Why aren't you doing anything? Someone put a fantastic email to the Prime Minister. They said: 'You built this desal unit in the Shire and you're not even using that.' That was a huge amount of money. People have got so many ideas in our community about how our regions could be doing better under this government—yet the government is doing nothing. I want to turn quickly to my own electorate and say how this government is failing the people of regional Australia. We have the M1. It is a massive piece of infrastructure. It links Sydney to Brisbane and it flows directly through my electorate. It is the main freight route up and down the eastern seaboard in Australia. When you get to Beresfield in my electorate, you come to a screaming halt. You have to sit at a set of traffic lights, turn right, go over the overpass, go down a piece of road and over an ageing bridge, and off you go again. Every B-double and semitrailer in Australia needs to do it. And don't just worry about holiday times. Three hours is nothing. They sit on that road for eight hours at a time on occasion. It is a nightmare and it is a danger. The government put it in the budget but they also sneakily said they are only going to spend three per cent over the next four years. It really is a minimal effort from a government that has the power to do more. On a very sad note, I want to talk about Frances Brennan. Frances was a lady in her later years. Her son wrote to me and said: 'We are waiting on an aged-care package. I am frightened that my mother won't live to see it.' Well, sadly, she didn't live to see it. She waited over 600 days for that package, and it never came. I'd like to say that this tragic example is a stand-out example. Sixteen thousand people across Australia have died waiting for a package. We note that 129,000 are still waiting. Their packages have been approved but they haven't been funded. Lastly, Dr Chris Boyle, a GP in my electorate from the fabulous Raymond Terrace GPs, has emailed me and said: 'Meryl, the Mediscare campaign'—which we put forward in the last election; that's what people from the other side were calling it—'is not without some basis in fact. By stealth, they are absolutely putting up the price to get medicine—' (Time expired)