Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, let me thank the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government for his attendance here today. We do appreciate the opportunity to raise issues in this manner. I will not take up every comment made by the minister but get to my questions as quickly as I can. However, I will take exception to the suggestion by the minister that there has been a decade of neglect in regional areas. I think the minister knows full well that many things were achieved under the previous government and that they were good for regional Australia. I know the rhetoric sounds good and it might look okay in the Hansard but the bottom line is that I do not think any government sets out to neglect regional areas or any other particular area; there are just some ways of doing it better. I am one of the members on this side of the House who are very passionate about regional areas, and I will certainly commend the government when it does something positive and hold it to account when it does not. That is my approach, Minister Crean.

It is with that very brief preamble that I want to raise a genuine question to the minister about the first round of the Regional Development Australia Fund. It is an issue which I have written to you on. It is in relation to the eligibility criteria for a particular project in my electorate—a plan by Southern Rural Water to work in conjunction with the Macalister Irrigation District to do upgrading on some irrigation infrastructure. It is a very good project, and it would tick a lot of boxes along the parameters that the minister has talked about here today. At the moment, though, as I understand it, the Regional Development Australia-Gippsland board encouraged Southern Rural Water to be part of the process and to make an application through round 1. But it was only late in the process that it came to their attention that a not-for-profit state government enterprise such as Southern Rural Water was not eligible to apply for funding under the RDA round 1. I think this is a problem on a couple of points. One is that Southern Rural Water would be the only organisation in my electorate with the capacity to deliver a project like this. It has the relationship with the irrigators themselves; it has the infrastructure capacity; it has all the know-how to get the project done. I respectfully seek the minister's advice on whether the eligibility criteria from round 1 could be reinterpreted or whether in subsequent rounds it could include a combined application. I do not expect the minister to announce funding for it on the spot but it would be nice if a project like this could at least be considered rather than be ruled out on a technicality. That is the question I raise on behalf of the Southern Rural Water board people, who have worked hard in this area, on behalf of RDA-Gippsland and also on behalf of the irrigators, who are very keen to upgrade the infrastructure in that area.

I take up the minister's comments regarding the opportunity for this fund to leverage funding from other sources. This is one of those projects that would have that capacity. The irrigators understand that, if the infrastructure is going to be upgraded, they are going to benefit from more water and they are going to be expected to dip into their pockets in order to get those benefits. This would have broader benefits—beyond the social and even the economic, through to the environment for the Gippsland Lakes. So it is something that, as I said previously, does tick a lot of boxes. I would appreciate the minister's comment on that.

The other area I want to briefly raise is the term 'localism', which the minister currently uses a lot. I like the term and I think I know where you are coming from with it, but I want to make the point that it does not get on the ground sometimes when it comes to federal or even state government announcements on infrastructure or other types of projects. A lot of these projects do not get on the ground in regional communities. My classic example is the BER program—the Building the Education Revolution program. From day 1, I said to the minister for education at the time: 'If you are going to run a program like this, let local building contractors have a crack at the contracts.' What we saw with this program was a whole bunch of portables that were built in Bendigo and sent to Gippsland on the backs of trucks. The workmanship on the ground was shoddy on many occasions. There was no pride shown because the people who were doing the work were not from my community. I do not think we leveraged the money off it that we could have. If you had come to my school community and said, 'I've got 400 grand for you to do a project in your school,' you would have been amazed at what they could turn 400 grand into. We have plumbers on our school boards. We have local tradies whose kids are at our schools. They will move heaven and earth to provide facilities for the schools that their kids attend. I think we lost a lot of money in that project because we did not give the local blokes a chance to actually implement it. I think that was a mistake. So when we talk about localism, I would like to know that in the future we would make a commitment to a least let the local people compete—at least let them have a crack at the contracts. There was no way that my schools were going to be able to compete with Bendigo Relocatable Buildings—no chance of that. The local people would have leveraged off that project and delivered more value for money.

In the brief time I have left, I refer to another comment you made, Minister, in relation to diversification of the economic base. I raise a point in regard to tourism. There is a really good opportunity for the federal government to do more in the regional infrastructure and tourism space. We have some outstanding natural attractions in regional areas. It is very hard for businesses in those communities to leverage off those great natural attractions unless governments are prepared to commit funding to the infrastructure that we need. I have not got a long wish list in front of me today, but there are plenty of things that we could be doing in the regional tourism space, with the cooperation of local, state and federal governments. Once again, I thank you for being here today and for the opportunity to raise those few issues.

See this speech in context