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

I might say that it was his government that set up this the incredible debt that Australia is facing.

At the moment, we have a net debt of around $250 billion—that is $250 thousand million, without changes to policy—that we were left by the previous government, heading for over $600 thousand million debt and we are paying interest rates that are at an historical low. The RBA current base rate is 2.25 per cent, and we can imagine how Australia would deal with paying the interest on those debts should interest rates go back to a more normal level of, say, four, five or six per cent.

It is no secret that the South Australian economy in particular is struggling. We have low population growth, high public debt, the second-highest unemployment rate after Tasmania—but only just—and the effect of the closure of the car manufacturing business is yet to come. Recent news from the resources sector has been fairly grim, particularly from my electorate. RM's decision to mothball its Southern Iron mine with the loss of 600 jobs will impact right across my electorate and the state generally as will the continuing downsizing of Santos's workforce in the Cooper Basin. Certainly not all of these job losses are in the Grey electorate but they will have a significant impact, and I cannot go past the personal impact on the individuals concerned.

I say have faith, because I believe that all of the industries will bounce back in the not-too-distant future. There are a number of reasons for saying that. For instance, in the last 12 months the Australian dollar has devalued by 25 per cent, which is providing some relief for exporters and those who are in export-competing industries. It is making previously unviable export industries competitive once again. The free trade agreements—and they were mentioned by previous speakers—with Japan, South Korea and China are unprecedented. This has been a golden era of trade negotiations by the very capable trade minister, Andrew Robb.

Some have been under negotiation for more than a decade and, as the member for Wakefield would know—

Mr Champion interjecting—

absolutely jack got done in that six years that they were in office. They left the same pile of negotiations on the table. They had not even lifted the top page off them, but the member for Wakefield still interjects. He should hang his head in shame. But Andrew Robb has picked up the pace and got the negotiations moving.

Those three trade agreements will benefit this country—this government provides much more than just talk; it provides action. I expect many of my industries, particularly the meat producers, the barley and pulse growers, the wine industry, aquaculture and marine fisheries, and our service industries to be enormous beneficiaries of those free trade agreements.

While we might face some very serious budgetary challenges at the federal level, we have every reason to be optimistic about our future as a nation. One of the reasons that I am optimistic is that this government and Minister Malcolm Turnbull have managed to get the NBN back on track—if indeed it was ever on any kind of track at all except the track to disaster left to us as a stinking carcass by the Labor Party and Senator Conroy. It was a field of failed dreams—and never more apparent than in my city of Port Augusta where the good people there were promised fibre-to-the premise to be completed by September 2013.

The opposition is very keen to point the finger at this government and say: 'You're not getting the NBN; you're holding up the NBN.' In fact, Port Augusta was supposed to be finished by September 2013, exactly at the time of the last election, so there should not have been anything for the coalition government to do. It should have been all finished and switched on. In fact the contractor has collapsed. They do not exist anymore as far as I know, and that was the contractor for Western Australia and they had already ceded their contracts to the Northern Territory.

Since that time, the minister has appointed a new NBN board—a board that has experience in rolling out communications systems. Port Augusta, I am very pleased to announce, will still be wired fibre to the premise. This is largely because it is one of 126 centres around Australia that are central hubs. It was important to keep the work going to the local contractors, and so the NBN board and the minister made the decision that Port Augusta would be wired fibre to the premise. As such, it is broken into three areas: central Port Augusta with 2400 connection points—the physical build commenced on January 15 and will be completed by October 15; the Port Augusta east connection will have 1800 consumers, and the physical build has commenced and will be finished by November 15—Port Augusta east includes Stirling North; and Port Augusta West will have 520 consumers and the preparatory work is underway—that is, getting the pipes, boxes and everything ready to feed the cable in.

This is great progress and shows how well the NBN rollout is tracking. The biggest changes will be noticed where the NBN fixed-wireless network is being rolled out. It is going into areas of high need that have very, very poor broadband at the moment and do not have access to things like ADSL There are six live sites in Grey that have fixed radio networks at the moment—Arno Bay, Balgowan, Cleve, Port Neill, Port Rickaby and Port Victoria—and we expect another 22 sites to be live by June 2015. That is providing a great benefit to regional Australia.

I want to raise another issue that I have spoken about in this chamber before, and that is a commercial fish-unloading facility for Ceduna. Ceduna is in the far west of my electorate. There is a port at Thevenard and it is the second-busiest port in the state. Almost three million tonnes a year are shipped through Thevenard—mainly gypsum but also salt, grain and mineral sands from Iluka and the Jacinth-Ambrosia project out to the west of Ceduna. It has also been a significant fishing port in the past. There is one company still operating at Ceduna—two of the Great Australian Bight trawlers unload there—Raptis. The port is so busy that it has become very difficult to unload and the Ceduna council has been pushing for a new fish-unloading spur on the main wharf, which will cost $9 million. There have been a number of times in the past under RDA when we thought that this might get up, that it was over the line and that we had some support, but it always proved to be ephemeral. There is no light at the end of the tunnel yet but they have put in an application under the National Stronger Regions program. They are looking for around $4.5 million. Hopefully part of the other $4.5 million will come from the state government. I am speaking to some of the state government ministers and trying to push them along that road slightly. The Ceduna council is certainly behind the project and we now have a major private investor who is willing to put their money on the table as well. Encouragingly, we believe that if we can get the unloading wharf in place there may be up to 10 berths occupied and that some more trawlers and some of the fin fishermen will come and unload in Thevenard. It is a real economic boon for that part of the state. It is sometimes difficult to find industries that we can really support in regional areas and that can support these regional populations. This I think is a great opportunity. It is a very good project. It has passed all the trip-wires a number of times before but it just did not make the funding cut at the end, because funds were diverted somewhere else or did not arrive at all.

I will be giving my absolute backing to this project and hoping that we can get Stronger Regions to see its benefit. It certainly has the backing of the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association and the RDA-Whyalla. I look forward to that project coming on stream as soon as possible. I certainly will be pushing this government to make sure that it receives a priority.

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