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

That could be so. We had, for example, programs to help the olive industry. In my electorate the olive industry is actually kicking a lot of goals and it has got up to a size where it has become a quite efficient industry. As another example, we built the first phylloxera treatment plant—very important to our viticulture industry—to kill a bug which could have a devastating effect on our viticulture areas. That was another great program that was funded under Regional Partnerships. Improving the water outlet at the Mount Gambier airport for our firebombers was another fantastic way of spending government money. On the very same day that we had those tragic bushfires on Eyre Peninsula in which several people died and we lost a lot of country—and I was very close to the action—a fire started in the forest in Millicent. As anyone knows, if that fire had gotten away, there perhaps would have been even more tragedy than we saw on the Eyre Peninsula. But the fact is that we had firebombers stationed there that were able to be filled up with water very quickly at the airport, which enabled us to put out that fire within minutes. That was a direct result of funding from the Regional Partnerships program. To say that is somehow a regional rort is absolutely ridiculous.

Concordia Kindergarten, in Murray Bridge, is a small community preschool which sought to expand its premises to offer community services and support to families who were doing it tough. Concordia had raised more than $50,000 from local businesses and the community. The Labor state government had put in $70,000 and Concordia was just waiting on a $107,000 Regional Partnerships grant. Unbelievably, Minister Albanese said, ‘Bad luck, we don’t need that community program at all.’ So he scrapped the Concordia Kindergarten expansion and 115 other projects. We now have a community, already short on services, economically suffering from the drought and now facing the situation of the community donations having to be given back.

The other rural and regional communities in my electorate and across Australia will not be able to apply for any new projects, be they youth projects, community projects or other much-needed infrastructure for at least two years. Another 470 Regional Partnerships grant applicants across Australia—and there are many in my electorate—who have been waiting for over six months for an answer on the future of their applications have been treated with absolute contempt by the Rudd government and none of them will be funded. Disgustingly, Labor frontbenchers like transport Minister Albanese and Finance Minister Tanner, who live in inner Sydney and inner Melbourne respectively, have spent the week in parliament scoffing at these various projects that have been funded under the Regional Partnerships program.

This is a callous government which has clearly targeted regional and rural Australians seemingly for no other reason than that they do not live in eastern seaboard cities and are not represented by Labor members of parliament. But let us not lose sight of the fact that somewhere in Queensland there is a dead tree that is about to get a $2.6 million grant approved by Minister Albanese—and I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, know that well. It is getting funding because it is a Labor tree. It is a Labor tree so it is going to get $2.6 million worth of funding! This is a disgrace and makes a mockery of Minister Albanese’s claim that the reason that he scrapped the Regional Partnerships program was the Australian National Audit Office report.

The scrapping of Regional Partnerships clearly shows the more than seven million Australians who live outside the major cities exactly what Labor thinks of them. It is a fact that irrigation is a huge economic driver in rural and regional communities, and it certainly is in my electorate. There are many businesses reliant on the irrigation industry and, as the drought has demonstrated, without water these businesses are doing it very tough. Already job losses and loss of population are having a severe impact on many communities in the Riverland and in the Murraylands in the seat of Barker. The Labor government cannot turn a blind eye to the impact that the buying of $3.1 billion worth of water entitlements will have on rural communities along the river. Under our plan, we would ensure that communities would have restructuring and that farmers would be helped to put in water-saving technologies for more efficient irrigation so that they could get more crop per drop.

But not this government. It seems intent on buying water, not necessarily in the overallocated areas. Often this buyback will not provide anything, because the government is buying entitlements from empty dams and from areas that cannot get an allocation now. It is a Clayton’s buyback—you can see that from the average price it paid for the water. For a decent water entitlement you would be paying at least $2,300 a megalitre, and the buybacks have averaged out at $1,400. Many of these buybacks are vacant uses at the moment, so it has not really achieved anything. The Rudd government’s Water Stakeholder Consultative Committee is more than qualified to investigate the socioeconomic impact of buying water entitlements, and its terms of reference should also be widened to include looking at the exit fees on selling water, which make it extraordinarily hard to buy water out of many areas. These caps and exit fees are very important tools to ensure that expensive assets are not stranded and that communities reliant on irrigation are not destroyed.

My electorate is large; it is 64,000 square kilometres; it is actually 10 per cent bigger than Tasmania—not quite as large as the Deputy Speaker’s electorate, but still a large electorate. It is over 500 kilometres from one end to the other, and for the most part it is not served by public transport like the cities are. People in the bush are reliant on filling up at bowsers to go about their business, to get their children to school, to attend medical appointments and to do their grocery shopping, and these can involve long distances. As far as petrol is concerned, the one thing that the Prime Minister can do right now is reduce the excise on fuel. Every day that Australians fill up with petrol  they need to know that under the coalition, whatever the price at the bowser, petrol would be 5½c a litre cheaper. Five-and-a-half cents a litre is a lot of money for a rural family heavily dependent on their car—and they are much more heavily dependent than people in the city. People in rural areas tend to drive at least twice as much as people in the city, if not more so. The 5c tax that the Prime Minister is choosing to place on Australians hits the pockets of rural and regional Australians harder because they are faced with those longer distances and no public transport.

The Prime Minister is trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he does have control over one element of the price of fuel—that is, the excise. If you drive through my electorate you will encounter heavy vehicles. Indeed, the south-east of South Australia is a hub of the heavy transport industry, with its B doubles and articulated vehicles transporting food and household goods to cities and towns across Australia. Labor’s plans to increase diesel fuel excise and registration charges for heavy vehicles will hit rural and regional Australia hard. The transport industry cannot afford to absorb Labor’s increases in fuel excise and registration charges, so the costs will be passed on to the consumer. The government has admitted these rises will flow straight through to consumers and drive up grocery prices for all families. Australian families, working families, will be hit hard with steep increases in prices across the board. For example, it is estimated that the cost of milk will rise by 17c a litre as a consequence of Labor’s slug on heavy vehicles.

With businesses facing closure, many constituents in my electorate held some hope that tourism might hold some salvation. My electorate has much to offer in tourism—unique features such as the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier, the spectacular scenery of the Limestone Coast and the drawcard of wine-tasting in the Barossa and the Coonawarra, to name just a few offerings. The Riverland has a wonderful climate and the magnificent Murray River flowing through it. Unfortunately, it is going through some hard times with the Murray-Darling crisis, not helped by this city-centric government.

The Rudd Labor government has turned its back on the tourism industry, scaling back funding for Tourism Australia, the nation’s peak tourism organisation, plus introducing $940 million in new tourism taxes. How dumb is that? At a time when the tourism sector is dealing with challenges from the high Aussie dollar and increasing fuel prices, Wayne Swan has cut funding for Tourism Australia by nearly $6 million in this budget. In the past, we have seen state Labor governments across the country, but especially in South Australia, slash tourism funding in the face of industry pressures. Now the Treasurer has joined the conga line of inexperienced bean counters.

The tourism sector is sick of being ignored by state Labor governments, and now Australia has wall-to-wall Labor robbing the tourism industry. Staffing levels at Tourism Australia are also being cut back by nearly 10 per cent; however, Labor is choosing to remain silent on this issue. In addition, Labor has effectively halved funding for the Australian Tourism Development Program from $29.9 million to $16 million. This is a major blow for the tourism sector, with the ATDP promoting tourism development in regional and rural Australia on a merit basis, contributing to long-term economic growth and increasing visitor numbers and yield throughout Australia.

People coming to Australia on a tourist visa will now be forced to pay $100 per application, which is an increase of $25, plus $240 for a visa extension, which has gone up from $215. This is highway robbery—slugging tourists more to come to Australia, particularly at a time when the Aussie dollar is so high. Labor is treating tourists like some sort of money-spinner and sending the wrong message to young people overseas.

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