Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I am surprised. Today has been a day on which, for reasons that are quite proper, the Leader of the Opposition was not able to be present for most of question time. One would have normally expected the Leader of the National Party to have taken a position of some eminence in this place, given that the Leader of the Opposition was absent. Did we see that? No. Why didn’t we see that? Because the Leader of the National Party is simply incapable of getting beyond his own past. The matter of importance that we have for discussion today is the impact of government policies on regional communities. But this is not about that, and they know it is not about that. It is actually about going back to the trough and back to pork barrels.

Do you know what is most important? The very first document that we got in this place as new members of parliament was the Australian National Audit Office’s review of the program which the Leader of the National Party ran, the performance audit review of Regional Partnerships, which is damning—caustic—in the way in which it describes the maladministration and the lack of focus on proper public policy outcomes in this program. The Howard government abolished the Department of Regional Development—got rid of it—in 1996. Why did they get rid of it? Because regional development was not important to the Howard government at all. Former Howard government Ministers Truss and Vaile did not even discover regional Australia; they discovered a pork barrel. They were never about regional development; they were always about pork.

What do we mean by only being about pork? We often hear from those opposite about the Regional Partnerships program, which is what this debate today is about. It is not about regional Australia; it is about hankering after your past and trying to make good the appalling record that you left behind. For instance, the Leader of the Nationals said on ABC Broken Hill radio on 8 May:

Now this program was specifically designed to provide things in small communities. Big cities have got the resources and can often provide, on a commercial basis, projects which are simply unviable in regional areas.

That is what the Leader of the National Party said to regional Australia not eight weeks ago, but what do we see from the program approved by the former government? We see $1.5 billion to the North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club in the 2007 election. (Quorum formed) This debate is not at all about development in regional Australia; this debate is merely about the National Party once again trying to re-present the horrible litany of incompetence, maladministration and pork-barrelling as evidenced by the National Audit Office’s report into the Regional Partnerships program. Once again, we see the National Party masquerading as the protectors of regional Australia.

But the Leader of the National Party did raise a very important matter and that is the issue of the by-election in Gippsland on this weekend. I would like to place on record in this place before the Australian people that Labor’s candidate, Darren McCubbin, is an excellent candidate. He is 46 years old and well known in Gippsland. He is known for bringing theatre to the people of Gippsland and fostering leadership qualities in the young people of the region. He is a writer, a producer, an actor, a director and the coordinator of just about every festival in the region. When we describe the make-up of candidates who are ideal for regional Australia, Darren McCubbin is just that candidate. He is the current Mayor of Wellington Shire. He has spent more than half of his life in Sale, where he established his entertainment business 17 years ago. Darren is married to his wife, Jill. She is the daughter of a local dairy farmer, and they have two daughters, Marni, five, and Ella, three. They live on a small rural block on the edge of Longford.

Darren was born in Yallourn. He saw a lot of Victoria as a child, because his father was a teacher who liked to travel a lot. He attended Hallam High School then Monash University, completing an honours degree in science in 1982. He also has a Diploma of Education from Monash Gippsland. He really is a local boy. He is a boy who knows that part of the world like the back of his hand. He was being trained as a forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology but decided to return to the country to take up a career as a secondary school mathematics and physics teacher in 1984 with Sale Catholic College.

From 1992 to 1995, Darren organised the Sale Mainstreet Program, which was designed to breathe life back into the local retail shopping strip. He formed the Wishbone Children’s Theatre for children’s shows, and The Murder Company, which hosts social and corporate murder and mystery nights. His company produces more than 250 performances each year locally, throughout Australia and in the Asia Pacific. Darren has been director of several local festivals, including the Mallacoota Festival of the Southern Ocean, the Stratford Shakespeare on the River Festival and the Bairnsdale youth festival. He also directed the Sale 150th celebrations and the Sale Water Water Arts Festival and was a performer at the Buchan blues festival. He is an Australian champion town crier as well.

This is a man with real qualities, real capacity to represent his committee and a real connection to regional Australia. Darren has been a councillor since 2003 and was elected mayor in 2007. He chairs a number of council boards, including for the Stephenson Park recreation reserve, Swing Bridge, Sale Netball relocation committee and the RSL memorials committee, and is on the board of the Wellington Youth Network. Darren graduated from the Gippsland Community Leadership Program in 2002 and sits on the board of the Australian Technical College in Gippsland. He is President of the Sale Theatre Company, Treasurer of Gippsland Regional Arts—Sale and Treasurer of Wellington Residents Against Toxic Hazards. He is a member of the committee of the federal government’s Festivals Australia panel and was made its chair in 2007.

He is a candidate who knows his community. He is a candidate who cares for his community and he is a candidate who, when he is elected on Saturday, will stand for something in this place. He will stand for regional Australia. He will stand for regional communities and he will not be cowed by the National Party and the way in which they cowardly bring into this place arguments which are merely designed to make look good that which the National Audit Office has itself said was a disgrace.

What we saw under the Regional Partnerships program, which the leader of the National Party seeks to defend in this place today, was taxpayers’ money paid to companies that were going broke despite, on many occasions, departmental advice not to pay that money. That happened several times. One would be surprised. I have said it many times in this place: the National Party simply have no capacity for trial and error learning. When you make a payment to a company that goes broke, once might be described as a mistake; twice is silly. But it happened time and time again. It happened with Indigo Cheese, it happened with Coonawarra Gold and it happened with Tailwaggers Essential Pet Food Pty Ltd. Under the Regional Partnerships program an astounding 16 projects were terminated because they failed to get off the ground. The House has heard of many of those 16 projects, but one—Tailwaggers—stands out for particular attention. A company called Tailwaggers Essential Pet Food was in Walgett, which was then in the seat of Gwydir, held by John Anderson, former leader of the National Party and at the time the minister responsible for the Regional Partnerships program. So the National Party have real form on this issue. Now we know how often the National Party’s tail has been wagged by the Liberal Party dog when it comes to regional programs. We have known that for quite some time.

What we know about Tailwaggers is that $246,477 was awarded to them. What we know is that after two years Tailwaggers failed to deliver any pet food at all. When we look at the program, when we look at how it was administered and when we look at the beneficiaries, we do not just see pork, we see pork and we see rorts, and the National Party knows that. Members opposite have told us many times that the Regional Partnerships program was about small grants for small projects. They tell us that it funded small community organisations, but we know that in reality it funded commercial enterprises too. We know that it was treated merely as a ‘free money’ option by businesses that could turn up to the door of the National Party and get ‘free money’—interest free, tax free—for almost any purpose. And if you ever believed that this fund was to be used for small community organisations—I have mentioned in this place before the correspondence that I have received from companies that believed they had got a promise, believed that they had a cheque in the mail, believed that their money was all done and dusted—I have one here, again from an ethanol plant. This ethanol plant believed that the former government had promised it funding. You know, the truth of it is that on so many occasions the former government did promise funding; they just did not complete or sign contracts. They just did not complete the paperwork. Why? Because on so many occasions what they were looking to do was merely win the votes, not actually invest in regional Australia.

It is actually a good thing that they did not invest in this particular ethanol plant. Here is the real grab in what the ethanol plant says to us. It says that they are particularly angry because not getting the ‘free money’ from the government means that they will not be able to get access to ‘large profits given the price of oil and fuel’. So here we have a National Party thinking it is about regional development, when in fact it uses ‘free money’ from the taxpayer, from a whole bunch of hardworking Australians, to support what? A company that was merely looking to make large amounts of money from oil and from fuel given the very high prices that Australians are now paying for petrol. It was not an enterprise designed, according to this letter, to build jobs; it was not an enterprise designed to create infrastructure in the community; it was not an enterprise designed to create a future for our regional communities; it was an enterprise designed merely to take advantage of the very high prices that currently prevail for hydrocarbons.

In this place, from time to time, you are surprised by what people say. I have never been surprised at the willingness of the National Party to repeatedly attempt to defend the indefensible; to repeatedly come into this place to use the time of this place to try to make good that which cannot be made good; to try to disguise the horrific public administration that is demonstrated in the Australian National Audit Office review of Regional Partnerships; and to try to pretend that somehow grants that were made without applications being filled in, grants that were made for companies that never produced a thing, grants that were made to seats that were held by the National Party members, grants that were made against the advice of the government department for which the minister was personally responsible were valid. And to cap it all off, today, on a day when the Leader of the Nationals should have come into this place, effectively as the Leader of the Opposition, and stamp his authority on this place as that person, he did not. He failed. (Time expired)

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