Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The town of Bourke is one of those few places whose very name resonates in the minds of all Australians. When someone says they are going to the back of Bourke, we know they mean that place of myths and legends—the Australian outback. When Henry Lawson visited in 1893 he said, ‘If you know Bourke, you know Australia.’ I have been to Bourke on a number of occasions and I found its 2,500 people to be resilient, proud and hardworking. They battle through drought, the latest resulting in a loss of about a third of their population. The closure of the railway line some years ago and the decline of the Darling River as a method of transport have both dramatically changed the town. Bourke has survived almost two centuries in one of Australia’s most inhospitable regions, beautiful but harsh, through natural disasters like drought, flooding and changing lifestyles which have seen people move en masse to coastal towns or to larger regional centres.

However, what I see now is the Rudd Labor government, which came to power less than a year ago, trying to outdo all of those natural and demographic calamities and working hard to kill Bourke and so many of the important regional towns and communities around Australia. What this government and its state Labor counterpart are doing to Bourke and other places like it is, frankly, cruel and heartless and uncaring—but it is real. Labor’s decision to change the focus and direction of the coalition’s $10 billion Murray-Darling Basin rehabilitation plan has devastated regional communities. Instead of restoring and modernising the basin’s infrastructure, as we intended to do, so that there would be more water available for the rivers, for the environment and for irrigators, Labor is buying the water entitlements from drought stricken, desperate farmers. It is buying pieces of paper. It is the cheap and lazy way out. It is not delivering water to the environment, but it is hurting, permanently, many rural towns, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria.

There is no account being taken of the long-term social and economic impact on local communities. The promised economic impact assessments before the water purchases have simply not been undertaken. The Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, will not even talk to these people; she will not even meet the very communities that are being decimated by the government’s actions. The government has no concern for these rural communities; it is interested in cheap headlines in the city. But they are just headlines. It is not actually delivering any water. As one of my colleagues said, ‘It is buying air because there is no water there to underpin the water entitlements.’ The decision to purchase the historic Toorale Station at Bourke and effectively turn it into a national park and to channel its water rights back into the Murray-Darling system is a classic example of this action.

We saw on Four Corners just a few weeks ago the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, clearly demonstrating that she had not even been there and that she knew nothing about the property that she had bought. She was prepared to spend $23.75 million of taxpayers’ money without even looking at what she was buying. She said she was going to buy water to restore the river’s environmental health, but she overestimated the amount of water that was available fourfold. She did not know at the time of the purchase that Toorale had virtually no water to send back into the system. She was buying just clear air. She did not know that this vast, once productive property would have to be managed for pests and weeds if it was going to be any kind of useful national park in the future. Senator Wong and her Labor government colleagues did not know or did not care about the hundred direct and indirect jobs that would be lost in Bourke and district. That is 10 per cent of Bourke Shire’s GDP. The minister did not even bother to ask what the impact would be. There was no economic impact assessment and there has been nothing offered from the Labor government for this community to compensate for the water entitlements that have been taken away.

Yesterday, Regional Express airlines—Rex—announced it would be stopping its air services to Bourke. Other services that are to be cut are going to include Dubbo to Cobar, to Coonamble, to Lightning Ridge and to Walgett, and Mudgee to Sydney. I know there is nothing easy about regional aviation, and Rex acknowledged this in its press statement, but it laid the blame for the cancellation of these services clearly at the feet of the government and the government’s decision to axe the en-route subsidy program. The Labor government did not announce this decision in the budget. There was no reference to it in the budget. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government quietly wrote to the airlines concerned to tell them that this scheme was going to end and that they should start looking at whether or not any of these services could be maintained.

The reality is that this scheme is going to be phased out by the Rudd government. This scheme, introduced following the collapse of Ansett and the events of September 11, provided help to 40 operators who run services to regional towns that otherwise might be unprofitable. The decision to phase out the rebate was not announced in the budget or even in a press release. The airlines were quietly told by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government that he was doing this because the routes were now in ‘a significantly stronger position’. Those were the exact words that he used. Tell that to Rex, Minister. Tell the people of Bourke, Dubbo, Coonamble, Lightning Ridge, Walgett and Mudgee that their air services are in better condition.

The rebate is to be phased out over a period of time but, immediately, no new services are eligible for this assistance—no new services. So now that the Bourke services have been cut, no airline that seeks to introduce new services to Walgett or to Bourke will actually be eligible for this support. How, Minister, are these poor regional communities going to manage without air services? How are their children going to get to school? How are people going to do business in the cities without air services? How could a government in the middle of this drought, in the middle of the water buyback, be so cold and heartless as to withdraw support for people’s air services, withdraw support for their connection to the rest of the country? What sort of an uncaring government do we have in these times of difficult economic circumstances in regional communities?

Bourke was originally a port where paddle steamers would ply their trade up and down the Darling. That form of transport was replaced by a more efficient railway until the line was destroyed by flood and never replaced. Now the airlines are going too. The need for good transport links is surely evident to everybody. Surely, it ought to be a priority for a government that cares about people who live outside the capital cities to provide some of these basic services for these small and remote drought stricken, troubled rural communities. It seems it is too much to ask from this government.

This matter of public importance also relates to the government’s policies on the physical, social and economic health of rural and regional Australia. We saw a torrent of taxation in the last budget that will affect all Australians, including people who live in regional areas. They will have to pay these extra taxes. The reintroduction of indexation of diesel excise for truckies and the new car tax are examples of the farcical response that this government is taking to the problems in regional areas. A farmer’s top of the range LandCruiser is now going to be taxed at 25 per cent because a concession was negotiated for farm owners’ vehicles, but if that same vehicle is owned by a shearing contractor he will pay 33 per cent even though he is driving onto the same farm. If he is a doctor visiting remote country patients on dusty or flooded roads, he has to pay the full 33 per cent tax. If the farmer leases the LandCruiser, he has to pay the 33 per cent. He has to pay eight per cent more tax if he leases it than if he buys it direct. What is the logic of this?

What kind of sound financial advice did the Treasury give to the government that concocted this ridiculous scheme? The family Tarago still cops the 33 per cent luxury tax. A large Australian built Holden, which the government is now about to provide $6 billion worth of subsidies for, will attract the 33 per cent tax, but if you go and buy some imported Jaguar, Mercedes, Audi or BMW—the kinds of cars you will see double-parked in Double Bay—you will pay no car tax, none at all. What is the fairness in that, Minister? How do you logically defend that as transport minister? This is an example of the way in which this government cannot see through the impact of its policies and devises a new luxury car tax scheme that subsidises imported cars but taxes Australian produced vehicles.

Talking about the car industry, car buyers and dealers are amongst those who have been critically affected by the government’s mishandling of its support for the banking system and the financial system at the present time. It has been estimated that perhaps half the nation’s car dealers might have to close because of the unavailability of finance for their floor plan and finance for their customers. This issue was simply overlooked by the Rudd government in its rush to guarantee bank deposits and it has done nothing since to repair the damage. How many car dealers, how many car employees, how many workers in the workshop have got to lose their jobs before this government will take the situation seriously?

Let us turn to the shameful situation of our public hospital system. In August last year the opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, was saying that, if he were elected to government, the buck would stop with him. The Greater Western Area Health Service, which administers hospitals in regional New South Wales, is so poorly funded that meat has been pulled from the menus of hospitals because the health service cannot afford to pay the butcher. Suppliers of security, taxis and fresh fruit and vegetables have been threatening to stop doing business because they are not being paid. A baby was born by the side of the road because an expectant mother was told to drive from Cobar hospital to Dubbo hospital. Doctors are paying for patient procedures out of their own pocket. Nurses are being forced to borrow bandages from the veterinary clinic. Surgery is being rescheduled because hospitals have run out of basic items like surgical gloves.

What is the Rudd government’s response to this appalling crisis? The Prime Minister said in parliament in answer to a question from the member for Parkes that he did not know about the situation even though it was in all of the Sydney newspapers that very day. But the government has just changed the rules which encouraged people to take out private health insurance. Treasury says that, as a result, 492,000 people will drop out of private health insurance. Those who remain in private health insurance will see their premiums rise and those who can no longer afford it will drift into the public hospitals, placing enormous new pressures on the already stretched system.

I remind you again that the Prime Minister said that the buck would stop with him. Before the election, the Prime Minister used the phrase 36 times. Thirty-six times he said the buck would stop with him. Since the election, now nearly a year ago, he has used the words only once. The buck stopped with him before the election, but now it is over he has forgotten the commitments and promises he made. The services are not being delivered. The health system is worse than ever.

At the last election we promised to return the management of hospitals to local boards. Local people running their local hospitals would never tolerate the kind of mismanagement that has been evident in so much of country New South Wales. We also said that there would be a fair share of the Commonwealth’s hospital funding dedicated to regional health care as a condition of the next Commonwealth-state health agreement.

We all know about the drought. It is the cruellest we have seen in this country’s history. We all know also of the suffering, how it affects people socially and environmentally. Now Labor want to reform drought aid because they say that exceptional circumstances provisions are not appropriate for assisting those dealing with drought. The theory Labor are trying to promote is that the cause of the present drought is climate change and there is nothing exceptional about it so therefore no-one should get any assistance. They even want to get rid of the word ‘drought’. A government report has suggested it be replaced by the word ‘dryness’. Apparently, Australia will always be dry and it makes people feel bad when the word ‘drought’ is used. This is politically correct nonsense. They are trying to change reality for a political purpose.

The government must continue to be prepared to stand by people in regional communities. They have contributed mightily to our nation’s wealth, our growth and our prosperity over the years and still do today. Do not kill off the communities that mean so much to our country. Give them a fair go. (Time expired)

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