Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely, we did not read it—in fact, we read the opposite. But what we are seeing now is the kids in the country schools getting the same quality of education as kids in the cities for the first time, because new technology that has gone into those schools accompanying the BER—interactive whiteboards, connected classrooms that were not there under the coalition and were not invested in by the coalition—is enabling those kids to get courses, training and teaching that they were not able to get before.

Added to that is the $332 million coming in to Eden-Monaro in investment in our health. When I surveyed my electorate, I had an overwhelming response, over 7,000 responses, and 99.9 per cent of the top priority listed in the survey was health. People in rural and regional Australia suffered the denigration of those services over many years of neglect under the coalition. The billion dollars that was ripped out of the system by Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister is now being redressed by this government. I have seen the investment in primary healthcare facilities with the surgery in Bombala Street in Cooma, the surgery and facilities at the MPS in Bombala, the Queen Street private health facilities in Moruya, the mobile dental services on the coast, the dental surgery in Dalmeny, the brand new primary health service in Tuross Heads and countless facilities benefiting from our after-hours service injection of funding. Now we are seeing the GP superclinic fully operational and functioning in Queanbeyan. There is funding in this budget for the GP superclinic in Jindabyne. We will see next year the work commence on the $170 million new regional hospital in the Bega Valley, servicing our region with state-of-the-art facilities. This investment is magnificent, overdue and highly necessary in a neglected region like mine. This is what rural and regional Australia is getting from this government.

There are other benefits in this budget. This is a budget that delivers for low- and middle-income earners and for all Australians but also delivers some of the big visionary reforms that we were looking for to move this country forward to those new frontiers in disability issues and in aged care. We now have $1 billion towards the National Disability Insurance Scheme and a $3.7 billion funding commitment towards the reform of our aged-care sector, particularly to look after those long-suffering aged-care workers who have really been behind the door in terms of proper wages and conditions over many years. This is historic. It adds to the other historic measures in the improvements in our pension funds with, on a 100-year scale, an increase that we have never seen before, the introduction of the Paid Parental Leave scheme and the mining resource rent tax that finally gives Australians a fair share of the resources that they only get one chance to get the benefit of. These things are historic.

We are also seeing the measures that the health minister announced just earlier here to encourage the health workforce and deal with the health workforce shortages that we have. I will not go over those, but certainly they are having an effect. Just a week or so ago, the health minister was with me travelling around the electorate announcing a new $31 million scheme to really tackle that health workforce issue in our region with new facilities and training facilities and student accommodation in places like Moruya, Bega and Cooma. This is addressing the issue from every end of the spectrum.

Also in this budget we are delivering on the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program that the minister talked about. For the 16.1 per cent of people in Eden-Monaro who are over the age of 60 this will be a very important preventative health matter and one that I know they will welcome, along with the $500 million dental health blitz which will improve dental facilities in rural and remote areas. These are things that people in rural and regional Australia salute and welcome.

The Paid Parental Leave scheme has been taken advantage of by 790 local families in my area. The pension reform that I mentioned is benefiting 27,100 local pensioners in Eden-Monaro, with them receiving an extra $154 a fortnight if they are a single pensioner or, if they are couples on the maximum rate, an extra $156 a fortnight combined. We have seen the carer supplement improvements and the senior work bonuses that are benefiting 27,100 local age pensioners in my area who can now keep working and still earn up to $250 a fortnight and not affect their pension. This is a welcome reform for them and it helps us to encourage the retention of skilled and experienced people in the workforce. We are also receiving benefits through the family assistance payments, the Family Tax Benefit Part A and B injections and the single parent funding. Also my 48,000 local taxpayers getting their tax cuts on 1 July have seen three tax cuts in a row delivered to them now, which has greatly improved their circumstances. In fact, the wage earner in Eden-Monaro now pays $1,200 less tax than in 2007-08 as a result of those tax cuts.

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