Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, it is not a matter of keeping on going; it is a matter of rejigging the money each year to pretend that you have done something new on skills training. In truth, you have not. Every year you have reannounced, under a different name, a different package—and still we struggle with skills training. This is an indictment of a Labor government whose focus should be on making those programs work year after year, not just reannouncing them year after year.

It is very clear that, in our nation at the moment, families are struggling with the cost of living. I give you the example from Victoria of electricity prices, which have increased by between 30 and 40 per cent, mostly because of the former Bracks-Brumby government's determination to set a benchmark of 20 per cent of power having to be produced by renewable energies. What did they actually achieve? Between 3½ and five per cent of that target. It is great to get a front page article on renewable energy and what they are doing about it purely for the votes, but when the rubber hits the road you see that they have not reached their target and you read about it in a small article on the third page of the paper.

Cost of living is extremely important to families with mortgages. I am in a big mortgage belt area and people are concerned mostly about the uncertainty that pervades government at the moment. That concern manifests itself in many ways. We believed that we were in the running for some funding through the budget for the Warragul hospital—the West Gippsland healthcare centre. It received zilch, nothing, nano. I believe that 19 projects were funded across the nation, but none for Gippsland, although we are going ahead with some roads programs which will be beneficial.

I return to my farmers and say this: I owe John Howard because he was extremely important to all of the farmers across my electorate. Through the drought years, for 13 years, the Howard government never once walked away from a farmer. In fact, you might be surprised to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that over those years the Howard government, with John Howard's signature on each one, spent $2.424 billion—that is, $2,424.1 million—on those farmers over that time. That does not count all the expenses that went into our farming communities. There was a direct concern and care for farmers who were suffering through that drought period. Each one of those farmers remembers that McMillan, of all places, was one area that was not in the funding stream because we just did not fit the criteria—but our farmers suffered in exactly the same way. I stand here at this time when, except for Western Australia, we are beginning to face the end of the drought and the results of all that has happened over 13 years in the full knowledge that, to the best of the ability of this parliament, the previous government and this government, we have supported those farmers through thick and thin. We will continue to support our rural communities through thick and thin.

I have some dreams that I would like to happen. I would like future governments to invest in aged care to the point where bonds were taken into high care. I have never moved away from that, from 1996 to this day. I would like to see money poured into our public secondary colleges across this nation, where every child in Australia, every teenager, can expect equal education, and that we retrain and re-fund our public education system. I would like to see cutting edge research on renewables rather than unsubstantiated expenditure in the area of a carbon tax of which we do not know the framework, where it will go or who will be paying. I would like to see cleaner emissions from our transport fleet of cars and buses.

We have great opportunities in this country to make a real difference not only nationally but to the world. We are good thinkers and we are good innovators. We can from this day forth take those opportunities and bring them to the attention of the world. (Time expired)

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