Mr COULTON (Parkes—Chief Nationals Whip) (13:51): After hearing speech after speech from members reading speaking notes from central HQ of the Labor Party, I’ve got an issue they might be interested to get their heads around: the debacle that was the rollout of round 2 of the On Farm Connectivity Program. Round 1 of the On Farm Connectivity Program, $15 million, took five months to expend.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a great program. This is assistance to help innovative farmers develop the connectivity across their farm, whether it’s for monitoring of water or soil temperature or it’s increasing the mobile coverage.

But guess what? Round 2, $18 million, was expended in four days, of which two were a weekend. It wasn’t announced publicly. It was on a website that farmers had to find. So, in four days, $18 million—four days. The maximum amount is $30,000. That’s 600 applications they supposedly processed in two working days and finished the program off.

I smell a rat, big time. There is something very, very strange going on, and it’s very much in alignment with round 6 of the Mobile Black Spot Program, where, in New South Wales, all but one of those towers went into Labor-held seats, and I think eight or 10 of those never got built because there was actually no proposal to build them. Communication is important to the bush, and this government needs to take it seriously.