This month marks 10 years since I was sworn in as a Senator for Queensland.
It has been the honour of my professional career to serve the people of Queensland.
As the first Senator to be based in Central Queensland for more than 25 years, I believe I have helped deliver results for our fantastic region.
I decided to run for the Senate after seeing how many people have no real voice in Canberra.
Before running for the Senate, I was Barnaby Joyce’s Chief of Staff.
I remember vividly visiting a struggling farmer in western New South Wales.
This man had no massive wealth, worked hard but was regularly crushed by the overzealous red tape imposed by bureaucrats paid better and with much less skin in the game than this farmer.
I wanted to fight for people like this farmer.
The forgotten people, like this farmer, are why Michelle Landry, Colin Boyce and I fought so hard for the Rookwood weir in our region.
The Rookwood Weir took years of campaigning and fighting with the Labor State Government to get across the line.
It is the first major piece of water infrastructure built in North Queensland for a generation.
The fight was worth it because Rookwood weir has been full since Christmas last year and now 100,000s of macadamia trees are being planted providing hundreds of jobs and a massive increase in agricultural wealth for our region.
A macadamia processing plant and a new feedlot are likely to be built in our region in the future too thanks to the Rookwood weir.
The forgotten people are why Michelle Landry, Colin Boyce and I fought so hard for the Rockhampton Ring Road.
We were all shocked that the new Labor Government scrapped funding for this much needed investment in the Bruce Highway.
Hundreds of locals rallied against the decision and our campaign got the decision reversed within just over a year.
The road is now started.
Labor may have forgotten the people of Rockhampton, but they eventually heard us.
The forgotten people are why Michelle Landry, Colin Boyce and I fought so hard for the Adani mine.
When Bill Shorten, Jackie Trad and Bob Brown tried to stop the Adani mine, we helped organise a rally in Clermont in favour of the mine.
Many believe it was this protest, which brought miners, farmers and unionists together, that helped deliver an unexpected election victory to Scott Morrison in 2019.
After the result, the Queensland Government backflipped and approved the mine.
More than 1500 locals now work at the mine and the first coal basin in Australia to be opened for 50 years.
We could not have achieved any of this without the support of many local people.
The rallies for the Rockhampton Ring Road and Adani were all organically organised by local people frustrated by the poor decisions made in Canberra or Brisbane.
We now have perhaps the most agile and feared political action movement in the nation, here in Central Queensland.
Given this impact, we are no longer as forgotten as we were once were.
However, instead of being forgotten, many people are now ridiculed by the self-appointed elite ruling class.
The Central Queenslanders rallying in favour of a coal mine were called rednecks and nazis.
If you do not agree with the “wisdom” of our betters, you are often labelled a bigot, a racist, a climate denier and sometimes worse.
The forgotten people have evolved into the ridiculed people.
Maybe this is progress because perhaps it is better to be feared than ignored.
Wherever you fall on that question there still remains a need for people in Canberra to fight for the forgotten people.
And I will keep doing that.
