Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Funding regional local community infrastructure. In saying that, I want to add a qualification with regard to the preamble to the terms of reference from the minister, which says:

... make recommendations on ways to invest funding in genuine regional economic development and community infrastructure with the aim of enhancing the sustainability and liveability of Australia’s regions

Liveability is certainly enhanced by community and social infrastructure. I would never resile from that nor do I suggest that it should be downplayed in any program. What I am suggesting is that, if you genuinely want sustainability in regions, they will not just be sustained by social and community infrastructure; they have to be sustained by economic infrastructure. In many regions that means more industry. Under the old ACC program, the Regional Partnerships program, which has been very roundly criticised by some people—and I understand that—what is not said is that the vast majority of those projects were very good. Yes, there are always failures, and I know the member for New England, who is here today, has been quite critical of some of those projects. Nevertheless, in the wider picture, the vast majority of those projects, both social and commercial, were very good.

I did not lodge a dissenting report through any bitterness or with any malice towards my Labor colleagues; in fact, I have a great deal of affection and respect for them. Let us say that on this report we agree to disagree on the emphases. There are two emphases that I think we disagree on. The first one is that community and social infrastructure should be the total focus of the new RDAs to the exclusion of commercial projects. The second one is the excessive involvement of the three tiers of government and the bureaucracy in the running of the program.

I spent 20 years in regional development. It is a very exciting and challenging field. In fact, I probably came to politics through regional development. I think we all come here for two reasons. We come here because we want to make things better and we want to contribute. Obviously, we will come at this through different ways. Having seen regional development in this country in practice, I can tell you that under governments of both political colours at both state and federal levels it has been a dismal failure. If anyone really wants to understand regional development, there are various places around the world where you can go to see it, but I think the starting might be the Shannon Development corporation in Ireland. For a ministry that carries the title of ‘regional development’ not to engage in some form of private or commercial activity, to my way of thinking, is an abrogation of the role of the ministry and the department. Again, that is said with no malice; it is just a statement of fact.

In spending those 20 years in regional development, it became obvious that regional development is not one for short-term initiatives. You might get a lucky industry at a first hit, but by and large it is a culture that needs to be in a community and it needs to extend over at least five, if not 10 or 15, years. In Ireland the two major parties have an agreement that when Shannon puts in its plan for 10 years they both agree to it so that the Shannon Development corporation—and, I imagine, other agencies like that in Ireland—can go about its work in the certain knowledge that there is going to be continuity. For regional development to become a culture and to start to make inroads into a regional community, you really need to have that longevity.

This might surprise you. I think one of the things that Gough Whitlam got very right was the idea of having larger regional cities in Australia, and although some people will criticise the Albury-Wodonga experiment and say that it may become over-bureaucratised—and there is probably some truth in that too—I did a paper on this when I first went into regional development and I thought Whitlam had it pretty right. We need to have outside the capital cities of Australia large, inland provincial cities that are hubs for those areas. For example, I would like to see a large provincial city on the Darling Downs, west of Brisbane—not Toowoomba or Warwick but another large provincial city, perhaps around Clifton or in that area, of 150,000 to 200,000 people. Otherwise Brisbane is going to go exactly the same way as Sydney and Melbourne: it is just going to sprawl and sprawl and sprawl. I think Whitlam was saying to move some of the things out and develop them in those areas.

Of course, you can do that by government intervention from above or you can do it from below. The best regional development is bottom up, but almost all regional development in Australia over the last 50 years has been top down. What happens in that circumstance is that, as governments change and ministers change and emphases change, the programs fall over and the new minister or the new government wants to stamp their character on what the new program will be. The minister might get promoted or the ministry might be changed in name six or 12 months later in a reshuffle and that all falls over again. That has been going on endlessly. I am thinking of the Queensland Department of Industry and Development. It became the Department of Industry and Commercial Development, then I think it went back to being the Department of Industry and Development, and then it became the Department Of Business, Industry and Regional Development and then it became something else and then it became the Department of State Development and now it has another name. Each minister who comes to the department—and I am not querying the sincerity of those ministers—does not put in place a program with longevity at its centre.

If you drive regional development from the bottom up, you need to involve the community. It needs to be driven by the businesses and the organisations of regional areas. These regions cannot be so big such that the focus is too amorphous or general; they need to be focused on the wider region. I think the ABS have got it pretty right. In most areas, the ABS regions are about right. I think there are 10 in Queensland and 10 in New South Wales. You all know the ABS regions. Some of them could perhaps be divided into two, but by and large they are right. They generally present a provincial city or a couple of provincial cities and the hinterland and, for those on the coast, the coastal towns of that region. That is the community of interest. That is where the business is done. That is where the accountants, the banks, the planners, the various industries, suppliers to industry and the transport companies hub. They are, if you like, the building blocks of regional development.

You then need something to drive it; you need a board. The board should not be too heavily influenced by either local government or government. If it is going to be just an extension of the local council, that is meaningless; you may as well do it in council. I think about half the people need to come from business itself; you have to headhunt a few leaders in these things. And then you have the chamber of commerce, the agricultural industries and certainly representatives of city and country local government and perhaps, if there is government money involved—and there should be—a representative from state or federal government. But the driving power needs to be the community itself. It is that sense of relevance, community and ownership which makes these things work.

If you have top-down local government, the second the government gets an embarrassing situation or turns off the funding the whole darn thing falls over. It just stops overnight. There is nothing to drive it. Once the government money is pulled out, finito! If you want to see an example of that, there is the VEDC in Victoria. It was probably one of the best regional development programs. There was a bit of scandal in it. Again, instead of going in and fixing the scandal, they chopped off the whole program and went back to zero. I think to maintain the continuity of regional development you need to have those building blocks in place and government should fund the base running costs of those things. At present they spend up to about $300,000 on ACCs and RDAs. But I think federal government should put about $150,000 or $200,000 into each of those development boards or bureaus or whatever you like to call them—and perhaps the state government should put in $100,000—and then let the communities get on and do it.

The next thing you need to do is a survey of your industries and your supply chain and the image that the broader Australian business and industry community has of your area. We go off and name things and we look at our navels thinking, ‘What a marvellous name!’ Everyone in town says, ‘Isn’t that a good name!’ What is important is what people in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, who are making the decisions, think of your area. If it is Bundaberg, Bathurst, Dubbo, Armidale or Tamworth, or wherever it might be, what does that conjure up? You have a survey and find what people think of your area—how they perceive it—because, if you are going to go out and market a region, perception is everything. You have to know what you need to correct in the minds of the decision makers and what they are looking for in your region. Honourable members, that seldom if ever happens. Governments devise a program and say, ‘We’ll call it Regional Partnerships or RDA or something else. We’re going to put all this money into it and it’s going to be marvellous.’ Then it gets bogged down, as this last program did, in bureaucracy.

It was interesting to see what Bill Trevor, the former mayor of the Isis shire, said about it. He was somewhat critical of the bureaucracy around the program. He pointed out that the department just did not seem to have a handle on how things should happen. For example, he said there was a:

• Misunderstanding about the complex place-based issues facing communities;

That is, there was no research into what is needed. There were:

• Unrealistic expectations of the capacity of community organisations to prepare complex grant applications;
• Unrealistic expectations about the capacity of community organisations to raise funds for local projects;
• Unrealistic expectations about the duration of funding required for projects to become sustainable; and
• A lack of understanding about the damaging impact on community organisations and private sector applicants of delays in decision-making.

What we need to do—and I could speak on this for an hour if I had to—is start with the building blocks, and then all the other things, the subregions, the liaison officers and the grant corridors for those things, would become relatively easy. My criticism of the report is not so much where it is going but the way it is attempting it. I call on my colleagues and the minister to give the sort of thing I am talking about today serious thought.

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