Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2009-2010 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2009-2010, which seek to appropriate funding for decisions in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook and for decisions taken since it was released. There was a community cabinet in Ballarat last week and it was a good opportunity to reflect on the strong work this government has done to set Ballarat up for the future. Prior to the community cabinet, a number of my parliamentary colleagues, including the honourable member for Hinkler from the National Party, who has unfortunately been absent for some time from this place, told me about how great these events have been for their local communities. I would have to say they were not wrong. Following the visit from the federal cabinet, local residents have emailed and called my office with very positive feedback. Comments such as ‘it was great to be able to have my say’ and ‘I enjoyed being involved in the conversation with government’ are just two examples of the feedback I have received.

The community cabinet started with a terrific performance from Ballarat High School, and I want to congratulate the students and the school for highlighting the talents at that school and for really doing Ballarat proud by hosting the Prime Minister and the cabinet at their school. I spoke about the long history of democracy across the Ballarat region and the importance of the community cabinet to local residents. The Prime Minister spoke about the important role the federal government has played in supporting jobs across the Ballarat electorate through investment in infrastructure. He also spoke of the government’s commitment to making sure that members of parliament were accessible through processes such as the community cabinet.

The 500-strong crowd raised questions with the Prime Minister on when the election is going to be, with Anthony Albanese on rail infrastructure, Peter Garrett on renewable energies and Wayne Swan on job security and taxation, just to name a few. I spoke to the Prime Minister afterwards and he enjoyed his discussions with local groups, such as the Ballarat East Community Men’s Shed, the Committee for Ballarat and Hepburn Wind. A local small business owner told me how great it was to have a face-to-face meeting with Minister Conroy to talk to him directly about the rollout of the National Broadband Network. Local councils talked to Minister Albanese about their plans for moving into the future. Minister Wong discussed the government’s approach to climate change with an active group of locals who are committed to reducing greenhouse emissions around the Ballarat region. It was a fantastic opportunity.

The access to cabinet ministers proved to be extremely successful with local residents, and holding a community cabinet in regional Australia in a city like Ballarat is really a great reflection of Australian democracy. Ballarat holds a special place in Australian history and, since the Eureka rebellion, the Eureka flag has been used as a symbol of protest by organisations and individuals at both ends of the political spectrum. It is a healthy sign of our democratic tradition that people continue to demonstrate on issues that they are passionate about today. It was wonderful to experience firsthand the interest and enthusiasm of the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers for our region and its residents, and their curiosity and willingness to engage with us.

What was clear from the community cabinet, from the meeting that the Prime Minister had with the four local government mayors and CEOs and the visit across the electorate itself, is that the investments we have made have not only put our nation in a better position than others in the developed world; they have also meant a number of things locally. Throughout my electorate we have been supporting families by creating opportunities for employment. We have also supported communities by investing in infrastructure. But, more importantly, the Rudd government have worked to set our region up for the longer term. We have only been in government for two years and we have achieved in our region more than the Howard government did in its 11 years in office. There has been more investment in my region in the last two years than there was in the 11 years the Howard government was in office. As a local member my focus and that of my team has always been to try and set up Ballarat for not just the next election but the next 10, 20 or 30 years, when people such as me are long gone from this place, and to put in place the infrastructure to develop our educational skills base and build tomorrow’s jobs in the electorate of Ballarat.

The first thing we needed to do on coming to office was to secure Ballarat’s water supply. That was one of the core promises I made in the lead-up to the 2007 election because without water Ballarat was absolutely in dire trouble. Businesses could not operate, let alone expand. Households could not function properly with day-to-day activities, let alone the recreational opportunities we were being denied because of our lack of access to water. In 2008, the water supply in Ballarat, which is a major regional city of some 95,000 people, got down to 7.7 per cent, which is just extraordinary. Securing Ballarat’s water supply for the longer term was my top priority and the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the then shadow minister for water, Penny Wong, absolutely understood the dire situation we were in.

During the election campaign, we made a commitment to fund the $90 million Goldfields Superpipe. We proposed that in opposition, and the funding was delivered in our first year in government. The Goldfields Superpipe was built, and it became fully operational in May 2008. Since that time, the superpipe has provided 24 billion litres of water into the region. Thanks to the Rudd government’s investment in the Goldfields Superpipe, the White Swan Reservoir is now at 84 per cent capacity. This is the highest level it has been since 2004. The Ballarat region now has 2.4 years of water supply secured. We now have the infrastructure in place to allow water to be piped within the available grid within Victoria to make sure that the dire situation that we faced with seven per cent capacity in Ballarat’s reservoir never happens again and that we never have to face the situation where businesses say that they are worried about having to pull out of Ballarat because we could not guarantee a secure water supply. That was just one promise and one investment that we made in the lead-up to the last election. We have also tried to look at ways to assist communities in recycling and reusing water. Unfortunately, that was never going to be enough to quickly rectify the situation in Ballarat, and that is why the Goldfields Superpipe was absolutely necessary.

We have also recently announced $2.37 million of funding to capture stormwater in Ballarat. The Ballarat project was one of 13 around Australia to receive funding under the first round of the stormwater harvesting and reuse project. It is a great example of how the government is trying to support local communities to tackle an era of extended drought and the effects of climate change. The project will make better use of water currently available in the region. With projects like the Goldfields Superpipe and stormwater harvesting, we are working to secure our most important asset, certainly in a regional community—water. We have done more in the last two years in government for water in the Ballarat region than the former government did. Obviously, we have not done this by ourselves. The local community has made an enormous effort to reduce its water consumption. I do not think we will ever face a situation in Ballarat where people view water and use it as though there is an endless supply of it. After the recent drought, we will certainly always treat water as something that is very precious.

Last Thursday, the Prime Minister and I visited the site of the realignment of the Western Highway at Anthony’s Cutting to turn the symbolic first sod of the works. The project, which has received some $160 million from this government, provides vital infrastructure for the Western Highway. It is certainly a vital infrastructure project for western Victoria in terms of safety, jobs and removing infrastructure bottlenecks. On the other side of Ballarat, there is the duplication of the Western Highway from Ballarat to Stawell. The Rudd government has contributed some $404 million to improve road safety and freight efficiency in this area. The Western Highway is an incredibly important corridor. It is the main corridor between Melbourne and Adelaide, and thousands and thousands of trucks and people travel on it every single day. I am sure the member for Mallee has driven on the road from Ballarat to Stawell, and at night it is not a great road to be on.

The two projects—for Ballarat and western Victoria—show that over half a billion dollars of investment is being put into road infrastructure in Victoria. This is a huge investment, with half a billion dollars being put into the Western Highway alone. We are trying to set up Ballarat as a major regional infrastructure hub for western Victoria. The region will be better connected to our regional counterparts through the implementation of these road projects. It is good news for Ballarat businesses, who will have better access to industry and trade from Melbourne right through to the South Australian border. It is also good news for consumers, with the improvement in freight efficiency. This is good for jobs and good for our local economy.

While I am talking about road infrastructure, on the local road front the government’s black spots program has proven to be pretty successful in my electorate, with some 18 projects at a cost of $5.4 million. Many of these projects have now been completed and the others are well underway. We have boosted this funding to ensure that local roads are safer and that we have the connectivity through our city and also to some of the major infrastructure arteries. Since I announced the funding, we have seen roundabouts and traffic signals being rolled out across the region, and that is positive to see.

On top of this money for roads, we have also seen improvements at six important level crossings across my electorate, in Wallace, Elaine, Sulky, Cardigan, Windemere and Burrumbeet. Residents in these areas know all too well the importance of improved road and level crossing safety. Initiatives like the Black Spot Program and the boom gates funding are examples of the range of initiatives the government is undertaking to improve road safety locally.

A main contributor to Australia’s vision for our future has also been investing in education. Since elected in 2007, the government has provided an unprecedented injection of funding into education. The government has been determined to support education investment because we know the importance of investing in local skills. It is absolutely vital if we are going to set our communities up for future jobs growth—jobs many of us cannot even imagine yet—that we actually ensure that our population has access to the best possible education it can.

I am certainly working with the community to skill-up our region and to set us up for the future. By investing in skills and education today, we are investing to improve our productivity into the future and to set our local economy up for the longer term. Our education revolution has seen an injection of $9.5 million as part of the National School Pride program in my electorate and $104 million for the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, as well as $1.19 million for a science and language centre. That is a total of $116 million for 168 projects across 85 local schools. Many of these projects are now coming to fruition, and I am looking forward to visiting these schools over the coming months to see first-hand how this is making a difference in local communities.

We have also seen investment in the Ballarat electorate across other levels of education. Six projects are being funded locally as part of the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund for Vocational Education and Training. Four of them are: BRACE Education Training and Employment, $1.5 million; Bacchus Marsh Community College, also $1.5 million; Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre, $239,000—and I have been told that the local community has recently advertised for tenders for the building of that project; and Finding Futures, $145,000 to provide improved access for people with disabilities to employment and training services. These organisations would not have imagined they would have access to that level of capital funding to improve their facilities.

The other two projects have been driven by the TAFE division of the University of Ballarat: $2.98 million for the refurbishment and extension of the primary industries training facility at Wendouree and $2.3 million for the construction of an equine centre at Mount Rowan, which is being done in partnership with Riding for the Disabled and so providing not only a great educational facility but also a great community facility at the same time. Not only has University of Ballarat received funding for these two important projects but also, as part of the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund, the Rudd government has announced $18.1 million for the new Manufacturing Technology Training Centre and $39.97 million for the Science and Engineering Precinct at the university. Again, we are trying to set Ballarat up as a regional educational hub, which is something that the University of Ballarat is well equipped to do for the whole of western Victoria, in my view. The construction of these facilities will stimulate economic activity in the Ballarat region and, once completed, will help the region’s industry to skill up for the future. That is what the government is about—building our region for the future and setting up regional Australia so that places like Ballarat will be sustainable for the longer term.

In our two years in government we have been investing in positive education projects. A further $2.1 million has been invested into secondary schools across my electorate as part of our Digital Education Revolution to provide computers in schools. The National Secondary School Computer Fund has seen Ballarat Secondary College receive $140,000 for new computers and Sebastopol Secondary College $195,000 for new computers, as well as other schools that have been finding it quite tough to fund their computer programs. Sebastopol college was also successful in their bid for a Local Schools Working Together pilot program and has received $2.4 million to build a community hub in that part of my electorate.

On education and skills, the Ballarat based businesses have well and truly embraced the government’s Apprentice Kickstart bonus. I understand that some 14,000 apprentices have been signed up since the bonus started, and it is due to expire on 28 February. In the Ballarat electorate alone there have been 100 apprentices signed up during that period. That is 100 kids who potentially would have missed out on getting apprenticeships because businesses were concerned about the global financial crisis. It was really important for that group of kids leaving school at the end of last year that businesses were provided with an incentive to ensure that they did not miss out. But, more importantly for regional economies, we know that after things such as a global financial crisis it takes a long time for the number of apprentices to build up again. It was really important that we acted in order to make sure that did not happen so that we do not have another skills crisis some four or five years down the track. I would certainly encourage any local businesses listening in to this debate—I am sure there are hundreds of them!—not to miss out and to make sure that they sign up if they are thinking of getting an apprentice. The bonus is available until 28 February, so it is important that they do so quickly.

I will turn briefly to a few other matters in my electorate. Social housing is something that I feel very passionately about. As someone who worked in the welfare sector—a long time ago now—I have seen firsthand the terrible, terrible circumstances that occur to people when they find themselves without a home. I am really proud to be part of a government that has made an investment in public housing. I know we call it social housing—I am still a bit old school; I still think of it as public housing. But I certainly think it is something that this government can be enormously proud of, that we are actually expanding the amount of social housing stock that is available in local communities, as well as investing in affordable rental accommodation and putting more money into the maintenance of some of the existing social housing so that that is also online. I know it is a small amount to tackle the huge problem we have in homelessness here in this country, but at least we are doing something, at least we are actually trying to tackle the problem and at least it is a start.

Since being elected, the federal government has also been committed to improving outcomes across the health sector. In my own electorate there has been a really strong investment in health. Ballan has seen the successful rollout of a GP superclinic, with $1.4 million provided to Ballan District Health and Care. That superclinic is fully operational and built and it has made an enormous difference to the people of Ballan. They now have access to a female GP for the first time. They have two more GPs who are now in that community. They have dental care for the first time ever in that local community. They also have a psychologist, which they did not have previously, and a multidisciplinary service which has really made a huge difference to the people of Ballan and surrounding districts. We have also provided $2 million to the Djerriwarrh Health Services, the Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital, as well as $500,000 to the Hepburn Health Service. We have also provided money to the Bacchus Marsh Medical Centre and the Creswick Medical Centre to expand their services—really vital health services in local communities.

I have said this before in this place, but I am now working with the local community to try and deliver funding for the Ballarat regional integrated cancer centre. The government committed some $560 million to building 10 regional cancer centres and establishing a network of those around the country. It is incredibly important for regional health. As we know, there is a discord between the health outcomes of cancer patients in regional and metro areas, and it is really important that we improve regional cancer services. We are certainly in with a good show, but obviously it is an incredibly competitive process.

The government has also committed through local councils to improving local community infrastructure. We know that local communities are more than roads, rail and ports and we know that social and community infrastructure is incredibly important. So the money that has gone into the projects across my electorate has been really important. Some of it is small amounts and some of it is large amounts, but it is all going into recreation and community facilities that otherwise would not have had that opportunity for funding.

These appropriations bills really do show that the Rudd Labor government is acting. It is investing to ensure the long-term sustainability of our nation and I am very proud to be part of a government that has invested such a large amount of money in such worthy projects in regional Australia. I certainly hope that members opposite are going to support these bills and I commend them to the House. (Time expired)

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