Barnaby Joyce: regions must be part of Australia growth story

Barnaby Joyce has called for a renewed commitment to regional growth.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce at the Queensland Media Club in Brisbane. Picture: Claudia Baxter.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has called for a renewed commitment to regional growth, saying the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s victory and even last month’s Orange by-election in NSW ­reflect a common concern about geographic, economic and social disparities.

But while rural disenfranchisement may have boosted Australia’s political fringe, something Treasurer Scott Morrison regards as a threat to the economy, Mr Joyce said the Nationals had to forget about fighting One Nation and instead “bring them in the tent”.

“What you’ve got to think of first is what’s best for my nation rather than what’s best for me or best for my political party,” the ­Nationals leader told the Queensland Media Club yesterday.

Reflecting on recent electoral shocks, Mr Joyce suggested many people felt constrained by political correctness: anyone who questioned a weather dataset was ­labelled a “climate denialist”, anyone who wanted Australian ownership was called “a xenophobe”, anyone who believed in family values was decried as “a homophobe”.

But Mr Joyce argued such criticism only made people keep their concerns and their views to themselves until an election, when deep divisions in society would reveal themselves.

Mr Joyce said harnessing the economic potential of regional areas would help all Australians to prosper. “You must bring along ­regional areas otherwise you will get a divide and you’ll get a drafting off,” he said.

“People who are doing it tough will end up in regional towns and people who are doing it well will end up in the cities and you start to create another disparity, a disparity which you don’t want in an egalitarian Australia.”

Mr Joyce promoted the Adani coalmine and said regional Queensland needed more dams, more rail lines, more infrastructure, and not be beholden to “a ­sacred tree or a sacred frog”.

As a former senator, Mr Joyce repeatedly called for zonal taxation, where the tax system is used to favour certain ­regions. He said yesterday he would like to see a review of the zonal rebate scheme to “make it more pointed and effective”.

He said the scheme helped ­regional cities but there should be “a more pointed reallocation of that resource to areas that truly need it” such as remote areas.