Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and related bills. After 18 months of Labor government, the coalition’s $22 billion surplus has dropped to a whopping $58 billion deficit. The government has now acknowledged that the gross debt figure will reach $315 billion, and unemployment is predicted to double. Perhaps not surprisingly, regional Australia has been hit the hardest by this budget. It is a touch of perverse irony that today’s balance of trade figures were enhanced by exports from regional Australia. While Australia might not be riding on the sheep’s back once more, certainly in the last 12 months of economic tough times worldwide the agricultural sector in regional Australia has showed its worth and solid nature by carrying the rest of the country through these tough times.

But there was very little at all in the budget for regional Australia. Twelve million dollars and 312 jobs have been slashed from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, while $460 million is sent overseas to help foreign farmers. The key research agency Land and Water Australia is being abolished and $12 million stripped from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. We have not heard much from the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on this. Just out of interest, in a recent survey of Australian farmers 70 per cent voted the current minister for agriculture as the worst minister for agriculture that Australia has ever seen. It is this lack of understanding of what potential lies in regional Australia that I find particularly depressing about this budget. We need to support the agricultural industry, not bring it to its knees. Another hit on regional Australia is the scrapping of the Regional Partnerships program, costing communities an important source of funds for local infrastructure and community projects. So many communities in my electorate have benefited from this program, which was instigated by the previous government.

Unfortunately, at the last election, Labor committed to expanding the role of the area consultative committees and rebranding them as Regional Development Australia. According to Labor’s election policy, the ACCs were to play a leading role in facilitating development in the regions. This has not been the case. The restructuring of the ACCs has pretty well made them useless as far as seeking development projects for regional Australia. The entire ACC network will be closed down from 30 June and 150 employees do not know what their future will be. The government will no longer have any direct connection with the regions or any mechanism by which advice can come direct from the regions to the federal government. They are going to absorb them into a state government structure.

I might comment on the recent funding from the Community Infrastructure Program. My electorate got one project. The people of Mudgee were very pleased to get $4.6 million for their sports complex—the Glen Willow Sporting Complex. I congratulate the Mid-Western Regional Council for the work they did on the proposal. However, that is a mere shadow of what the former Regional Partnerships program used to deliver. I wonder how the good citizens of Lightning Ridge, Walgett, Boggabilla or Mungindi are going to benefit from a sporting complex in Mudgee. When you have an electorate that is 107,000 square kilometres, an eight-hour drive from one end to the other, having one regional development program in one town, while it is beneficial for that town, has next to no impact on surrounding areas.

There was also the legislation on Monday night—and we have just had some discussion in the other place about this—to take the name ‘regional’ out of the Regional Strategic Roads program and shift the Black Spot Program to have its funding directed onto the major network. That Regional Strategic Roads program has delivered great results to areas in my electorate. I quote the Wellington to Narrabri road, which incorporates road 353 out of Wellington, and the Grain Valley Way between Mullaley and Boggabri. The sealing of this road has given a great alternative route to the Newell Highway, but also fixed up a lot of safety issues and given access to markets to people that operate properties on that road and also access to education for their children.

I go back to the fact that if regional Australia and agriculture at the moment is carrying this country through this economic downturn, why would a government cut back money and services that would enable these businesses to grow and expand? Everything the Australian people buy on the supermarket shelf starts on a local road. In my electorate I have multimillion dollar businesses that cannot deliver produce to market with as little as 10 millimetres of rain. I have large, successful properties that cannot find staff because people will not live where they cannot get their children to school, or young families do not want to go out there because they are worried about how they are going to handle the issue of childbirth when you live 200 or 300 kilometres from your nearest birthing centre. As we are looking to regional Australia to carry the country through this economic time, instead of nurturing it and encouraging it and helping it to grow, we are cutting it back. It is taking all the funding. We are putting Pink Batts in roofs and we are giving $900 to people to put through the pokies, but we cannot manage to put a bit of bitumen or a bit of gravel on a road that might carry 100,000 tonnes of produce a year.

Parts of my electorate are still in drought, but in 2010 the exceptional circumstances funding will cease. Indeed, many of my areas have been declared by the minister a fortnight ago as no longer in need of support—we have changed the word ‘drought’. Now, thanks to the minister, we now cannot say ‘drought’; we have to refer to ‘dryness’—and these people are wondering how they are going to survive.

People are managing in parts of my electorate because the season has changed, but they are still in dire straits. What is on offer for them? I will tell you what is on offer. These people, who are professionals and who are recognised as the most efficient farmers and food producers in the world, are being given a couple of thousand dollars to undertake a TAFE course to improve their management skills. But, in order to receive any of this funding, they have to fill in their climate change strategy. I challenge anyone to fill out a form identifying their climate change strategy. I was a farmer for 35 years. There are variations in the climate. I am not talking about climate change per se; I am talking about the vagaries of climate. Climate can vary markedly. Teaching a farmer to adjust to climate change is tantamount to teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs. It makes no sense.

We are giving the farmers a fair rap here. Where else can we cut back on government expenditure? I know: we will take away the youth allowance for regional kids so that they cannot go to university. We will change the rules so that they can no longer go off grape picking or melon picking or working at Woolies over Christmas. They now have to find a regular job and work 30 hours a week, for 18 months. Mr Deputy Speaker, where in regional Australia does that sort of employment exist? And when someone has been out of the education system for two years because they have been working, how do they get themselves back to university? Previously, they would earn the $19,000-odd that they needed over a 12-month period by working very hard—they would work in very unpleasant, very hard jobs to earn that money—so that they could go to university at the start of the second year. The payments for youth allowance would then come through to them by mid-year. They cannot do that now. Universities will only defer a course for 12 months, so these young people will have to reapply as mature age students. Already the chances of a child from regional Australia getting a tertiary education are about half those of their city cousins. So how are the regional areas of Australia going to grow and prosper when the people who live there have fewer academic chances than their city cousins?

Then there is the issue of health. It is close to a fortnight from the time when the Prime Minister said that the bucks stops with him when it comes to regional health. In my largest town, Dubbo, the area health services still owe millions of dollars to local suppliers. It is indeed true—I know it as a fact—that the nurses have been sourcing bandages from the local vet. They have been buying test strips for diabetes.

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