Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to object to this motion being put today on the grounds that, historically, this government has changed what was once an Australia-wide possibility to apply for Commonwealth funding for community programs, for builds, that might have created jobs and community infrastructure. In the past, under a Labor government, this was the RDAF. I note that this government left it as it was until just this last round when, mysteriously, the boundaries changed and areas of this country were cut out of applying for this grant. I stand here as the member for Lalor whose community was a recipient of this grant under this government, but not this time. We were not allowed to apply. Someone applied some maps and put some boundaries in—exclusive boundaries, I might add.

While I congratulate all the communities who did the hard work of applying for this grant, I note that in Victoria communities around Ballarat, Corangamite, Murray, Gippsland, McMillan, Flinders, Mallee, Indi and Wannon are all recipients of this round but that the electorate of Lalor was locked out of this process. I condemn this government for the changes that it made to this program, locking out communities like mine and locking out electorates like Holt, both of which are in growth corridors. We don't have to go very far to find that people living in growth corridors feel that they are doing it tough and that they are being neglected by this government. But this grant process is one area about which we can clearly say is an opportunity that we have been cut from, that our applications have been disallowed.

Looking at the electorate of Lalor, there were lots of things. In fact, our local government already had prioritised projects where they were going to seek support from this grant until those boundaries were changed and until a growth corridor, like the city of Wyndham, was locked out of this level of support. The city of Wyndham could have applied for a new station at Black Forest Road with the Regional Rail Link. They are keen on that as a major project, as an extension of a Commonwealth program under a previous Labor government. We could have applied for some support in upgrading our irrigation, which we have failed to get under this grants program and we have failed to have funded under the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund program. We could have applied for support for our catalyst sites to reset the Werribee CBD as an employment hub for locals. We could have applied for building funding for BizBuddyHub, which is a collection of microbusinesses in my community. They desperately need somewhere to set up so that they can collaborate, share costs and innovate together. There are things that we would have and could have applied for.

In fact, there were things that we were already looking at as a possibility of being part of this process, and we were locked out. One can only assume that we were locked out. When you look at who was funded this round and when you look at those boundaries, it is pretty clear that this government doesn't recognise that growth corridors might need extra support. At the rate our area is growing, it is turning into a population of 230,000 people halfway between Melbourne and Geelong. I note that, under this program, the city of Geelong is still considered to be regional, but Wyndham City has been cut from this program. For the people I represent, me coming in here today and hearing people celebrating the grants that have been provided or will be part of their future just highlights this government's lack of attention to detail and lack of attention to the growth corridors—not just the one I represent, but growth corridors around the country.

We should be remembering, as the National Growth Areas Alliance tells us, that five million Australians live in growth corridors, where LGAs and local communities are struggling to keep up with the exponential growth that's happening all the time. In my community we are building recreational facilities at a rate of knots to keep up with the growth. This program could have offered some support to the community that I represent, but this government chose to lock us out of the process and lock us out of our capacity to join the rest of Australia in building for our region.

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