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

I have great pleasure in getting up and speaking to these appropriation bills because they are part of what was such a wonderful budget for regional Australia. I will go through some of the highlights of the budget that I see for the whole of regional Australia and, indeed, for my electorate.

Firstly, I want to talk about the Building Better Regions Fund, which was increased. There is now a total of $500 million for that and the major regional projects fund. These programs have already funded, in my electorate, things like a multimillion dollar upgrade to redevelop Oakes Oval in Lismore so that it can retain its position as one of the premier sporting venues in our region. Nearly $2 million has been provided to upgrade the Maclean Riverside Precinct, which is going to increase tourism turnover in Maclean. It is a beautiful village on the Clarence River, and certainly this riverside precinct upgrade is going to improve tourism visitors there.

There has also been money given to the Bridges Renewal Program. Kyogle has 200 or 300 wooden bridges that are ageing. They have quite a small ratepayer base of less than 10,000. They do not have the resources to fully upgrade all of these ageing wooden bridges. Already through this program, which has been re-funded in the budget, there are 14 or 15 bridges we are replacing. In fact, last week I was out west of the range in Old Bonalbo. We opened a new bridge there on Duck Creek. That was a highlight for me and certainly the local residents around there. On the way home—just as an aside—we also popped into Bonalbo to turn on the new mobile phone tower there. They have certainly needed that for a long time, and it was great to do that—but I digress.

This Building Better Regions Fund has also funded things in my electorate, like the upgrade that we are going to do of the Woolgoolga Surf Life Saving Club. It is also going to fund a $500,000 amphitheatre and casino. It is going to fund a $500,000 new Wollongbar multisports facility, which is a new sports complex that the Ballina Shire Council are building up on the plateau. That is going to be spectacular. It is going to have panoramic views from where it is up on the plateau. It is going to be a great facility.

This program funds things like CCTV cameras in Grafton and South Grafton. It is going to fund the Our Kids driver-training facility at Lismore. The origins of the funding for that are actually quite sad. We had a tragedy just over 10 years ago when four young men all died in a car accident. From that, Southern Cross LADS was born. Some of the parents and community members there have changed the driving rules in our state. The extra hours for P-platers and also the fact that P-platers cannot have passengers in the car after a certain time at night were brought in because of that horrific accident. We are funding a driver-training school that is going to help our youth get better training and have better driving skills.

Also from this we are doing things like funding the Kyogle aquatic centre. There is going to be a pontoon at the Woodburn foreshore. Woodburn, a beautiful place on the Richmond River, is going to be bypassed by the Pacific Highway upgrade. I am going to get to the Pacific Highway upgrade later, which is obviously a huge infrastructure project. When it gets bypassed, I think Woodburn is going to flourish. It is a beautiful place beside the Richmond River. There is going to be an upgrade happening there and many other things.

Also, the Stronger Communities Program has been funded in this budget as well. Deputy Speaker Wicks, I am sure you are aware of this as well. This is a great program where we can help fund small community programs of between $5,000 and $20,000 to help small community clubs get the infrastructure and services they need. That has been funded in this budget as well.

I alluded earlier to the Pacific Highway upgrade. This is directly employing about 3,000 to 4,000 people in my region. The part of the highway left to upgrade is predominantly between Woolgoolga and Ballina. When you count indirect jobs, we are probably talking about something like 6,000 to 7,000 jobs because of this program. You cannot drive up and down that highway without seeing a massive amount of equipment and a massive amount of work going on.

Why are we doing that? We are doing that primarily because, statistically, the number of fatalities has fallen dramatically where the dual duplication has already occurred. In fact, fatalities on the Pacific Highway are at multidecade lows. When you think about the increased traffic on the Pacific Highway relative to what was happening multidecades ago, the reason that fatalities have decreased is the dual duplication. So that is the reason we do it, and that is the reason we are going as fast as we can to finish it. All of the money needed to finish that is in the budget. It has a target completion date of 2020. Obviously there is a commercial benefit while we build it. Post the building of this highway, the increased tourism and the better transport networks we will have around our region will make it flourish.

Also in the budget was the Roads to Recovery funding for local councils. We have restored the indexation of the Financial Assistance Grants to local governments and also have healthy spending on Roads to Recovery. Roads are very important in my electorate and to my local councils. They need help to maintain local roads to the standard that they do.

And then, of course, there is the major infrastructure. Besides the Pacific Highway, there are other major infrastructure projects in this budget. The Inland Rail between Melbourne and Brisbane is very exciting. That has opened up the whole of the west of New South Wales. It will make it easier for that area to flourish in getting product and things to port. It is going to make us more efficient—indeed, on an international level—which is great news for jobs in regional Australia.

We have the Western Sydney Airport, again a great decision that has been made by this government. We see the funding for that in the budget as well.

Not only is Snowy 2.0 a wonderful infrastructure project; we know the importance that this has for our renewable energy targets. What we understand on this side of politics—as I think the member who spoke before me does not quite get—is that we appreciate renewables, but we need a reliable source of power for renewables, not an intermittent source of power for renewables. The Snowy scheme will certainly help us do that.

Education—wow! What great commitments we are making to education: an extra $18.7 billion. When we got into government, the federal government before us, up to 2013, was spending roughly $13 billion on education. This is going to increase to $30 billion by 2027. These are real increases in education. All my schools, given our SES classification, are going to do exceptionally well out of the education funding, and I have had great feedback from my local schools and parents about that.

Also in this budget, regardless of all that, we are going to get back to surplus. We are going to get back to surplus because we have targeted some really good revenue measures, which I will talk about in a minute.

We have lifted the Medicare freeze, which was, as we know, implemented by the previous Labor government. We have reversed that freeze. We have guaranteed the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and other things in the budget as well.

There is bipartisan support for NDIS. The only thing that was not bipartisan was that we knew we needed to fund it. The previous government, I think, came up with a good idea to increase the Medicare levy by 0.5 per cent to do that, and we have said, 'To fully fund it, let's do that again.' We know it is progressive. We know that people on lower salaries pay a much smaller amount than people on larger salaries because of the progressive system of our tax.

On banks: I know we talk about how we are spending money and we are getting the budget back into surplus. We are doing that, because we are putting a six-basis-point levy on the banks. I think this is very fair because we are taxing banks, or putting this levy on banks, which have an explicit guarantee—or that is what the rating agencies think. If you look at Standard & Poor's, they say there is basically an explicit guarantee of the four majors. That dates back to the global financial crisis 10 years ago, when the government at the time gave them a guarantee and said, 'The four majors cannot fail.' Standard & Poor's themselves say that that guarantee gives major trading banks a 20-basis-point funding advantage over the small banks, so we think it is very fair that those banks pay a little bit of that—six basis points of 20, which they already have as an advantage, according not to me but to the rating agencies—in helping us get our budget back into balance.

We certainly understand that small business is the driver in all economies and certainly in regional economies. I have a few large employers in my electorate, but certainly small business is the biggest employer by far. What are we doing for small business? Much as the other side may have fought us, we have given small business a tax cut. We understand that they need to remain competitive. The more cash flow that a small business has, the more it can grow, the more people it will employ and the more it will succeed in its endeavours. We have given them a tax cut, which we are thrilled about. I do not have to walk far down any street in my electorate before people come up to me. I do not even have to ask small businesses, who say, 'The instant tax write-off that you have given us for the last two years and indeed you have now extended in the budget is an absolute boon for us.' Now, what is that, Deputy Speaker? I know you understand that, if you are a small business, you do not have to depreciate over a number of years any capital item that you purchase for under $20,000; you can have an instant tax write-off on that. We have done it for the last two years, and we have extended that. This has been a great windfall. I know that a lot of people who have small businesses have taken advantage of this, and people who sell capital equipment have told me that the customers started flowing in the day after we announced that two years ago. That is to continue, and it is very important.

Affordable housing is something that we all know is important, and there have been some wonderful things done in the budget for that as well. The salary sacrifice, where you can save your deposit into your super, is going to be a great success. It is a good initiative. With some of the funds that we are giving to state governments, there are going to be some things that will encourage supply, because, if you want to make housing more affordable, it is not hard to work out that you need to build more. We are encouraging the processes so that we can build more houses and get more supplied to the market.

Regarding foreign investment, there is going to be more tax on foreign investors, especially those investing in residential real estate. As a result of legislation that was passed a year or so ago, we are already cracking down on multinational tax avoidance, and we have budgeted to increase the take from that.

There has also been an appreciation from this side of upskilling and making sure that apprentices continue to flourish and get opportunities in our community. We have introduced an annual worker levy on foreign workers. This will be paid so that there is a fund put by from which we can help and employ apprentices.

We want everyone who does not have a job to get a job. So what have we done? We have done a few things. We are doing a trial, which I think is a wonderful idea. We have done a trial for 5,000 people where, if you have a drug habit, we will do two things, because we want you to get a job. We do not want you to be sitting at home on the couch thinking that the best thing you can do is suck back on a bong. We want you to feel as though you have a great opportunity to get a job. We will do two things for those with a drug habit. There will be a punitive side of it. We will give you a cash card so that you cannot buy drugs if you are on welfare and you have a drug habit. That is one side of it. The other side is that if you test positive more than once you will get free medical and rehabilitation services.

There are so many great things in this budget on so many fronts. I would like to talk about some more local things as well. I ran through many before, but there are just a couple that I wanted to go through but did not get to.

Mental health is obviously a thing that I think, as a community and as a society, we have much more recognition of than we have had in previous years. We make it okay to talk about it, and we certainly hope that people who feel mentally unwell feel that it is okay to talk about it, to be up-front about it and to seek help for it. When anyone takes their life it is a tragedy. The community of the Clarence Valley in my electorate has had some youth suicides that have been an absolute tragedy. They have really rocked the community to its core. We are doing what we can there as well, and it was wonderful not that long ago to fund a new headspace facility. The money for that is in this budget. This is going to be built in Grafton to service the wider Clarence area, and there are some other services that we are going to fund as well, because we do not just need to do the early intervention of a headspace. One of the things that has been identified is that, when people who have been admitted to a hospital or to a mental health institution are let out, it is a very dangerous time. Some of our local health people said the follow-up as a person was discharged was not good enough and it was found that there was a bit of a vacuum in the follow-up services and care there. We are certainly going to be putting a lot more resources into that too.

As a whole, there are a few points I would just like to leave us with. It is a wonderful budget for regional Australia. It is a wonderful budget for infrastructure spending around the country. It will have more job-creating opportunities around the whole nation. We are responsible and we have funded it, and that was a very important aspect as well.

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