Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is no doubt, if you want to define this budget in one area, that it is a city centric budget and it has been a kick in the guts for people in rural and regional areas. There is no doubt that, when you look at the cuts to the government programs, they have centred on the rural areas which the government obviously do not understand. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry lives in inner Sydney. In fact, if you look at the make-up of the ministry in this Labor government, the ministers are from the cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne—forget about the rest of the country. We have one token minister from Western Australia and one token minister from South Australia and they do not seem to have that much influence on what is happening in this country. Again, the rural areas have had the biggest cuts in this budget. Even before the budget, it was announced that the first cuts would be in rural areas.

The government continue to talk about the so-called skills crisis in Australia, yet one of their first actions was to cut funding for agricultural and horticultural apprenticeships. How smart was that? We really need to continue with apprenticeships to upskill people in our rural areas, but one of the first actions of this Labor government was to cut the funding, just as they cut quite severely the FarmBis program—a very successful program in skilling our farmers and people who help farmers in this country. The only way you can get a FarmBis training program up now is to say it is about climate change. There are a lot of other issues in farming besides climate change. I agree with the agriculture minister when he says we need to adapt to climate change. We have always had climate change and we need to adapt to it, but it should not be the be-all and end-all of getting a training program up for the FarmBis program.

When you look at some of the other training subsidies that the government give, it is interesting to note that they say, ‘We’ll give you a training subsidy for something like picture framing, but too bad if you’re in the mining industry, we’re going to get rid of those training subsidies.’ So there is no training subsidy for the mining industry and many of the other important areas where they are needed. One only has to have been at the Mining Council function last night to realise the importance of the mining industry. But this government say, ‘Okay, we’ll give training subsidies for picture framers’—it might be an important minor area of our economy—‘but forget about it for the mining industry itself.’ How dumb is that sort of situation, when you have a government that does not give training subsidies for the mining industry?

Rural and regional communities across Australia are by no means homogeneous. Indeed, there are many great differences across the states and territories in the size of the towns, the wealth and the environment. Even in my own electorate there are great differences. There is high rainfall areas in the lower south-east—30 to 35 inches, in the old terms—but further up north, in the Riverland, for example, the rainfall is only about 10 inches. So it does vary quite dramatically, even around my electorate, in the things that are grown there. But what they do have in common is a small population spread across a vast area, something that I think city-centric politicians find very hard to understand. The challenges this poses for the rural economy and society for the provision of infrastructure and services are immense. Australians, including many in my electorate, are concerned with agriculture. I have a very large agricultural base in my seat—in fact, the seat of Barker has often been termed the most agricultural seat in Australia. We produce nearly half of Australia’s wine—I am proud to say it is the best wine in this country—in areas like the Barossa, the Coonawarra, Padthaway, Mount Benson, Wrattonbully and Lower Murray. We have some fantastic areas in my electorate for wine production.

We also have a very heavy agricultural industry in the traditional areas of beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, horticulture and forestry. Forestry, as I said in my maiden speech, provides about $2 billion per year for the economy in the seat of Barker, so it is a very important part of our economy. We also have very large areas of horticulture. The Riverland, with its citrus, almonds and viticulture, is very important for the economy. Unfortunately, as I have said previously in this House, they are under really severe stress at the moment because of the crisis with the Murray River, which unfortunately this government does not seem to be helping all that much.

We are certainly very much the food bowl of South Australia, if not Australia. What this budget offers for rural and regional Australia, not only in agriculture but also in water and transport, is therefore very important to the constituents in my seat of Barker. It did not take Labor long to show their attitude of ideological indifference and callousness to the needs of rural and regional Australians. Minister Albanese’s decision to abolish the $236 million Regional Partnerships program and the $200 million Growing Regions program is all about a mean-spirited politics of city versus the bush. And they have made great play of some of the problems with the Regional Partnerships program. I do not know of any government program that does not have some problems, but to the best of my knowledge there have been something like 700 successful projects and only a handful of problems with that program. So, on the basis that it has actually been a program that was always going to be a bit risky, in fact many of the things that have happened due to Regional Partnerships would not have happened without the Regional Partnerships program. The decision to scrap 116 Regional Partnerships projects, which were approved by the former government, is a direct swipe at people in the bush. Interestingly enough, in the last 24 hours we have seen one of the biggest backflips that I have ever seen by any government. The government have actually restored 86 of those 116 projects. So, even this new Labor government recognise that many of these Regional Partnerships Programs were in fact very beneficial to Australians in the bush.

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