Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If the clouds are there, it is just behind the clouds! Toonumbar Dam is a very important piece of infrastructure for Kyogle. The Toonumbar Dam is absolutely beautiful. It has a gravel road at the moment, but a lot of tourists go out there. It is very popular with campers and families, who go to the dam and, obviously, use it for water recreation sports and other things. In this program we gave Kyogle a million dollars to upgrade that road. It has tourism potential, and we know that when tourists come they spend money. We know that piece of infrastructure is going to be very important to the Kyogle region.

There is more: the Lismore Quadrangle project, which received $2.8 million. It is an old disused secondary school building in the middle of Lismore. It is really looking quite decrepit. It has not been used for many decades and really is a bit of a blight on the landscape. But there is a magnificent plan to completely revitalise that with an art gallery and to revitalise the whole square around it. It adjoins the city library and the conservatorium of music. It is really going to revitalise that section of the CBD of Lismore. Of course, we know that the Margaret Ollie Art Gallery in our local region, further north on the Tweed, has really encouraged a different type of tourist—a different type of person—to visit the region. So there are many exciting things which are going to happen from that.

Lastly, but not least, the other one from the National Stronger Regions Fund is the Ballina Marine Rescue Tower. This is very important for the Richmond River, which meets the Pacific ocean at Ballina—a beautiful part of the world as well. It has a marine rescue tower, manned by volunteers who keep it going. But it is in great disrepair—in fact it had to be closed, and the volunteers have to do their jobs not in that building because it was deemed unsafe. That was not okay. They got $850,000 to completely redo it. Obviously, that will mean a lot for our fishing industry—there is a fleet of trawlers in Ballina—in being able to get out over the bar. The Ballina bar is an exceptionally dangerous bar, so it is an important piece of infrastructure for that industry and also for the tourism industry—obviously, people who want to go boating and those types of things. So it is a great program at the top of things the federal government should do in maintaining infrastructure in job and growth related investments.

The other one—and, again, you would know about this program, Madam Deputy Speaker—is the Bridges Renewal Program. The Bridges Renewal Program is very important to a lot of our local councils, especially in my region. The region is called the Northern Rivers; we get a lot of rain. When you have a lot of rain, you have a lot of creeks, a lot of streams and a lot of rivers. One particular council in my region—Kyogle, which is quite a small council as far as ratepayer base goes—has over 200 wooden bridges, and a lot of them are around 50 or 60 years old. The council does have a maintenance program with them but it is a very stressful program for them to maintain those bridges. The Nationals are very proud with our coalition to put money into this type of infrastructure.

Our Bridges Renewal Program is a new program for this parliament. It was not in existence, and we very strongly lobbied for it. I was delighted to announce just a few weeks ago that in the second round of this program Kyogle put in an application for seven bridges and got approval for them all. The Lions Road is an amazing story. The Lions Road is a shortcut for people to get from Kyogle through to Brisbane. It was built by the community. It was not built by the government or the state government. There is a wonderful family in Kyogle: the Hurleys. Jim Hurley is a legend in that region. They basically said, 'Look, we can take a lot of travel time off getting from Kyogle to Brisbane,' so a number of decades ago they just built it. They got their machinery out, cleared a path and built a road. It was not an easy road to build, because it went up over hills, mountains, creeks and streams. It was a big effort. But obviously some of these bridges are now in need of repair. There are six of them on that road. It is very important for tourism; there are a lot of bike riders, motorbike riders and other tourists who do that trip down through that beautiful region. When you do come, I will point it out to you so you do not miss that bit, and you will admire some new bridges, Madam Deputy Speaker.

There are many others. We have put money into CCTV cameras. From my election promises, I know we have put money into health infrastructure. In fact, the previous member promised some money to an emergency department at the Casino & District Memorial Hospital. I did not. I actually gave some money to the Ballina District Hospital because it needed a new operating theatre and some new imaging equipment. I made a promise for that, and after being successful in the 2013 election the Casino hospital people range me and said, 'Kevin, you haven't promised this one, but come out and have a look.' And I did; I went out and had a look at the emergency department at Casino and saw just how badly needed that piece of infrastructure was. It was a $3 million investment that needed to be made. I approached the then Minister for Health, the member for Dickson, Peter Dutton, and he was very generous and wisely saw the need for that infrastructure spend. We matched that promise even though we had not made it through the election campaign.

Governments have a big responsibility, and appropriation bills are very important. We talk about sustainability when we talk about the environment, ecology, our future, our grandchildren and our children. We talk about the fact that we need to leave things for them, that we are borrowing things on their behalf and are custodians for this. We are custodians for our children's and our grandchildren's finance. With appropriation bills we need to look at the sustainability of our economy and the sustainability of the government's finances. So, yes, as a politician, we love running around handing out money, but we have to be very wise and very prudent with it. We have to give it to projects that are good infrastructure or good jobs- and growth-building projects. But we cannot hand over to our children dirty streams, dirty rivers or land that has been ruined and we cannot hand over to our children or our grandchildren finances that have ruined the country and have put a tax burden on them because of the debt that we have run up and the interest expenses on that. We need to talk much more about sustainability when we talk about appropriation bills and finance. I thank you for the opportunity.

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