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

I rise to raise some issues that have been brought to us by the member for Dunkley, specifically those relating to Regional Development Australia, RDA. In his question he referred to correspondence from our department to former area consultative committee members. I am not aware of the detail of that correspondence, but I appreciate that you will have given an accurate reflection of its content. To the extent that the content of that letter does not reflect the government’s view that people who are part of area consultative committee networks performed to a very high standard, there are people there who worked very hard indeed in the interests of their communities. There are people there who saw the interests of their community and sought to serve. There are people on the area consultative committees who genuinely view the interests of their communities as being both worth while and the sort of thing on which they sought to represent their communities on area consultative committees as best they could. It is unfortunate that in so many ways people feel, as we transform to the new entity, Regional Development Australia, that their efforts have not been recognised and understood. We do understand that.

What I would like to say, too, is that in the process of transitioning to RDA it is our intention—advised by people from regional Australia, advised by state governments, advised by local governments and advised by members of communities—that what they really would like is a one-stop shop, a single entity that they can deal with on regional development issues. It would mean that good, serious members of communities did not have to attend an area consultative committee meeting, their local council or shire meeting and then their additional meeting as part of a state development commission. So what we are doing here is bringing together two serious instruments, including the instrument which states have—in the case of Victoria, Regional Development Victoria, significantly supported by the Victorian government—with the intention of creating a good public policy framework around the delivery of regional development policies but, most importantly, to bring budget strength from the state government to match the insights of communities as part of RDA.

Doing that does mean that difficult choices are to be made. We understand that. We recognise that. We are up for the difficult decisions—we always have been. But we are not up for accepting that the process of making this transformation is at all wrong, unfair or a misuse of government funding. The people in the area consultative committees have in fact over the course of the last two years been insulted by two things.

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