Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise tonight to raise the issue of regional inequality. In so many areas—health, education, employment, telecommunications and supporting those doing it tough—the government appears to ignore the regions. Their single biggest plan for the nation is a $50-billion tax cut to big business. But how will this address regional inequality?

For example, Braddon has some of the worst health indicators in Australia. A person living in Braddon has a life expectancy of 79 years, compared to someone living in urban Sydney of 84.5 years. The poorer health indicators in Braddon play out in admissions to public hospitals and visits to the GP. And what is the government's response? An attack on the very tool that supports preventative health outcomes—the Medicare rebate freeze. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners President, Dr Bastian Seidel, who practices in regional Tasmania, says this about the freeze:

We know that financially vulnerable patients will delay seeing their GP if they are faced with increased out of pocket expenses, and they will eventually call an ambulance or present to emergency departments at a much greater cost to the taxpayer.

When it comes to educational outcomes, the picture for young people in my electorate further demonstrates inequality. Full-time participation in secondary schools in Braddon sits at 67.4 per cent, compared to the Prime Minister's local area of Woollahara at 83.6 per cent, and yet this government is axing the needs-based Gonski funding—the very funding designed to support every young person to give them the skills to receive a quality long-term education. When it comes to employment, Braddon and Tasmania are suffering a jobs crisis, with a crash in full-time work. According to the ABS, Tasmania has lost 7,600 full-time jobs since November 2015, with part-time and casual work filling the gaps. Just recently, one local business changed ownership. While the employees kept their jobs, they have all gone from full-time to casual.

As we look to the future in telecommunications, the digital divide between city and regions continues to grow—but again, how has the government responded?

They are rolling out a second-class fibre-to-the-node NBN to our largest cities, Burnie and Devonport. Burnie Mayor, Anita Dow states:

Access to a fibre-to-the-premises NBN connection is a key factor in driving innovation to the Burnie CBD. There is a need for infrastructure to support a city and region that needs to be clever and connected to the world.

The government's program for mobile phone base stations that would allow people in my electorate to access digital services via their smart phones is equally a fiasco. Round 1 locations are delayed and, despite the government promising work would start immediately in areas such as Sulphur Creek, these have now been deferred.

Owner of Inglenook by the Sea B&B at Sulphur Creek, Ron Dennison, has said everyone is dependent on their mobile phone in today's day and age. While his guests are able to get internet access, they cannot make mobile phone calls and he offers them the use of his landline. He is frustrated by the long wait in getting the problem fixed and said he has noticed a decline in the number of corporate visits, which he attributes to the lack of mobile phone reception. This is 2017, not 1917.

In nearly every indicator, people living in the regions face challenges, so you can imagine their disgust when the support networks established by successive governments are now under attack. This government wants to cut pensions and payments to families—cuts that will disproportionally affect the regions—and it wants to make the people of my electorate, who have worked in some of the most difficult circumstance you can find, work until they are 70 years of age. In December last year, I received an email from Ray and Trudi French of Turners Beach that best sums up this issue. They said:

Dear Justine thanks for getting back to us and sending the information on our entitlements.

After reading through it, it comes as no surprise to see what the present government is trying to do to people of our age.

The one thing that gets under our skin is the changing of the retirement age.

We think it is disgusting that people who have worked hard all of their lives may now be expected to work until they are 70.

We may have voted them in last time, but it was a first and last time.

They have made blunder after blunder and if what people that we know, are anything to go on, they will be out next time.

This government's policies do not address regional inequality; they entrench it. So I say to the Prime Minster: dump your $50 billion in tax cuts for big business and, instead, invest in the people from regional Australia.

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