Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011 and the amendment put forward by the member for Sturt. There has been much said in recent times about what the government said going into the last election and what we now understand remains of those commitments. The list of policy abandonment, reversal and underperformance continues to grow. The latest announcement by the Prime Minister, concerning the introduction of a carbon tax, while just the latest, is certainly one of the most breathtaking. How is the Australian public to believe anything this government or this Prime Minister says when, in effect, we are currently being told that black is white?

Today I would like to look in particular at some of the commitments made to regional Australia, both during the election campaign and in the immediate period following, when the government sought to buy the votes of Independents. The government has loudly proclaimed the virtues of its Regional Development Australia networks and how they will be the primary vehicle for investing a total of $10 billion in regional Australia. I have three of the 55 Regional Development Australia boards within or partially within my electorate. I must say, there has been a flurry of activity as they have sought to meet deadlines for nominating a full list of the priority infrastructure projects within their management areas.

Judging by the lists I have seen, I think we can probably assume the RDAs have earmarked projects collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The RDAs have been positive and, indeed, quite excited about the money they hope to win in the process because they have been told that, as part of the deal with the Independents, there is to be $10 billion investment in regional and rural Australia. I have been checking the government statements to try to understand where this money is, how the program is coming along and when these RDAs can expect the funds they have been promised to address the long lists of infrastructure items they have compiled to meet the demands across their communities.

The first thing I learned is that the $10 billion is in fact $6 billion. In response to a question on notice asked by the member for Paterson requesting the total value of funds available for the Regional Infrastructure Fund, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government provided information confirming $6 billion was the total figure. So what happened to the other $4 billion that was announced in all the hoopla as the Labor Party sought to buy victory after the election? In fact, almost the total amount comes from one-third portions sliced off existing or announced programs in health, education and training. It is quite a coincidence really. There is about one-third of Australia’s population living in the regions, so the great deal we are to be grateful for is the pro rata allocation of funding guaranteed for regional areas. We are expected to be thankful for receiving our traditional share of the pie, for being promised what we were likely to get anyway.

One way or another that has chewed up $4 billion, so I will return to the $6 billion—not the $10 billion but the $6 billion—the minister tells us is available in the Regional Infrastructure Fund. It turns out that $5.6 billion of this money is to be raised from the mining tax. It begs the question: do we have a mining tax or not, and do we know how much it will raise? This highlights the point I made earlier about lack of delivery and policy reversal from this government. Remember the Prime Minister’s victorious announcements of peace in our time with the big mining companies in that brief period of euphoria when she disposed of the previous Prime Minister and basked in the glow of being Australia’s first female Prime Minister? That was before we found out that the government wanted to change the terms of the deal with the big miners, and now we find that they do not have a deal; it is a shemozzle.

If we put that to one side for now and take the leap of faith and suppose that the government actually does have the money it has promised to the regions and which has so excited the RDA boards, no doubt $6 billion is a significant amount of money. But it turns out that $5,427 million of this pool of money is not available to the RDA boards; that is money to be spent at the government’s discretion. I will come back to that later. The RDA boards have only $573 million earmarked for their projects, and that is to be spread over the forward estimates—four years, so about $140 million a year. There is another pool of money the RDAs can compete for, the $800 million Priority Regional Infrastructure Fund. This fund is available over five years. Unfortunately, the government has just withdrawn $350 million as a saving measure, leaving just $450 million of this program, or another $90 million a year. So in total it looks like there might be about $230 million a year available over the next four years. As I said, there are 55 RDAs around Australia, so that means on average they should hope to win about $4 million a year. That ought to build about one school hall on current rates. To quote Shakespeare, the government’s commitments to regional Australia are really much ado about nothing. That is $4 million a year per RDA to address the very large list they have compiled in good faith to build a platform to underpin the future of regional Australia.

How much of that $4 million will actually make its way to what I call regional Australia? Some of this gets curiouser and curiouser. It is worth examining what the federal government thinks qualifies as regional. While I have not investigated the footprint of each RDA, it turns out that 11 of the 55 RDAs are based in the capital cities, far-flung regional centres such as Melbourne and Sydney. So forgive my cynicism, but as someone who does genuinely represent regional Australia I worry just where the boundaries start for regional Australia when the head offices of the RDAs are in the capital cities. As I say, I am not familiar with the footprints but I do know that $480 million from the $5,427 million the government says it will commit to regional Australia, but will not allow the RDAs to get anywhere near, is earmarked for the Perth Airport upgrade. Talk about regional. Perth Airport! It seems that one does not have to travel far from the main street to find regional Australia, hence my apprehension. In fact, $900 million of this fund was already committed through election promises. While we are on election promises, it is worth looking at what the Treasurer committed to on 13 June last year. Western Australia and Queensland can expect $2 billion each in additional infrastructure from the fund. Simple maths will tell you that of the government’s funds theoretically available to regional Australia, wherever that is, an absolute maximum of just $1,427 million—$1.4 billion—remains available for New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the territories, and that is to be spent over 10 years. That is about $140 million a year. Once again, much ado about nothing.

I have spoken to a number of representatives in the Regional Development Australia boards and local councils who are beginning to understand that they have been deceived by the spin and that their enthusiasm for the much touted investment in regional Australia has been misplaced. In fact, collectively, they feel they have in good faith been developing proposals for the government which in reality have no chance of success. This investment follows the well-worn path of this government: overpromise; underdeliver. In the end, this government will be judged on what it delivers, not on what it promised. The further apart those two things are, the harder they will be judged. There is no goodwill left. Even among traditional Labor Party supporters there is widespread realisation and recognition that the government is not up to the job, that it promises large visionary schemes with motherhood objectives that it has no idea how to deliver. When we in the opposition point out the failure of their commitments we are castigated as obstructionists. The government would have done well to have listened to us on the Prime Minister’s pet project: the school halls program. They should have listened to us when we predicted failure in the insulation disaster. They should have listened to us about the overrevved stimulus package, which continues to borrow $100 million a day, and about the futility of the Asia-Pacific forum, of GroceryWatch and of Fuelwatch. They should have been listening to us when we called for a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN. The Regional Development Australia deception seems to be just another of these abandoned dreams. There is little for regional Australia to get excited about and the trust that our regional leaders have given to the government has been betrayed.

I will turn to the second reading amendment that the member for Sturt has put forward to this bill concerning youth allowance arrangements in Australia. This debate on youth allowance for regional students is a festering sore for the government. Last week we heard the announcements that the government was bringing forward a review of the arrangements for youth allowance. In that announcement the public was led to believe that the government was going to fill the gap until the review was completed by continuing the old arrangements—by restoring the youth allowance option of independent youth allowance to those who live in inner regional Australia. I have said before in this place that I was well pleased for my own electorate with the changes that were made last year, because all but one town in my electorate lies in outer regional, remote or very remote Australia. That one town is Eudunda and I will continue to remain interested in the debate on its behalf and also on behalf of all students who live in the inner regional part of Australia. I feel that even though they do not live directly in my electorate they are part of my constituency, because there is a basic unfairness in the system as it lies at the moment that needs to be addressed.

I heard a member speaking earlier in the chamber about what he believes we really need for Australian regional youth; that is, a genuine living away from home allowance for those who have to leave home to attend university. I developed a paper on this two years ago and launched it at an isolated children’s conference in Woomera—an ICPA conference for South Australia that was held in Woomera. I highlighted many of these problems and accumulated information from various reviews which had shown it costs around about $20,000 a year extra to send your child to university or other tertiary education if they have to leave home. That is not $20,000 in total; it is $20,000 over and above what any other parent would pay to get their child through university. So if your kid has to leave home, even if they live in the inner city and have to go to another city to access a course, you are $20,000 behind your neighbour. I have always thought this was a grave injustice. It may not have been due to my paper, but within three weeks of my launching it we had the announcements in the budget that changed the ground rules on youth allowance entirely. So we went back to ground zero and started designing it all again.

It has been an ongoing passion for me, and I must say it is one of the reasons that I got involved in the parliament. As someone who has raised three children in regional Australia and managed to get them all through university—I must report my youngest just finished his degree last year and started working a couple of weeks ago, so I am pretty happy about that—I really do understand what these costs are all about. I know the sacrifices we had to make to get our children through the system. I was in a position to meet that cost and I do not begrudge it, but there is no doubt at the end of the day that I am probably $500,000 behind where someone would be if their child had been able to live at home.

At the time of an earlier debate, almost in another life, I remember saying, ‘It’s not my fault that no university chooses to build a campus alongside my house.’ In fact, I have offered to make land available for just such a happenstance, so if any universities out there are interested in building at Buckleboo I would be pleased to provide a paddock for them. The point is that I make a decision about where I live; my children do not. If parents are in a position to help their children, that is good, but they may not be. Other parents may choose to find other things in their life more important than their children’s education. When the kid knows that maybe there is not that much money around the house, they do not have to be told by their parents, ‘We can’t afford to send you away to university; we can’t afford your tertiary education.’ They pick up the vibes and they say to mum and dad: ‘Don’t worry—that’s not really what I wanted to do anyhow. What I really want to do is to go and be a checkout chick or a plumber,’ or, ‘I’d rather be a council worker,’ or whatever. But they will send a message to their parents: ‘Don’t worry about me—I’ll be okay.’ That is why our university attendance rates in regional Australia are roughly half what they are in the urban centres, in the capital cities. That is why, as I say, this is a festering sore for the government. It is a problem which needs to be fixed up.

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