Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm quite surprised that there's nobody else from the government side to speak on this motion, given the fact that it's their motion. They claim to be the parties that represent the regions but they are not here to speak on it. Apologies that I was late to stand to speak then; I just would have thought that they would want to speak on their own motion. Maybe it is because they realise that it's an absolute joke of a policy that the government have put forward and they are a little bit embarrassed by what has happened in their first round of the Building Better Regions Fund.

I should note that this isn't the first time a federal government has had a funding stream available for our regions to tap into. Under Labor it was called the Regional Development Australia Fund and it was a genuine commitment to work with local, state and federal governments to build the infrastructure that we need in the regions. As my friend and colleague the member for Lalor pointed out, it acknowledged all areas of the regions—like our outer metropolitan areas, with their cross-section of outer metro and regional—and the need for infrastructure in those areas. Those are areas like Werribee and parts of Western Sydney, where they are feeling the pressures of growth. These are regions, and this government is choosing to ignore them.

When the government got elected, they scrapped the Regional Development Australia Fund and the role that our RDAs played in ensuring that these areas were priority projects. The government then had the National Stronger Regions Fund. In motion after motion of the last parliament, we heard about how great that fund was. It wasn't as good as Labor's fund, but it did help deliver for places like Bendigo. We did receive funding under that grant scheme for our airport. We did receive funding for the redevelopment and the building of an aquatic centre. It was a project and a guideline that we could work with and that our region said it was able to access.

However, what we're seeing from the Building Better Regions Fund, the BBRF, is a really confusing model. There are two streams now, an infrastructure project stream and a community investment stream. For the infrastructure project stream, as we have pointed out, those successful grants have been announced. They line up with a lot of election commitments made by this government at the last election. This also highlights where they were focused. Perhaps, unfortunately for Bendigo, we didn't make the list and the cut for funding because we weren't a target seat. It's just another example of pork-barrelling by this government, particularly in the state of Victoria—funding for Gippsland, funding for Corangamite, funding for Murray, funding for Flinders, funding for McMillan, funding for Indi, funding for Mallee, funding for Wannon. Bendigo, in Victoria, is the second-biggest regional city, after Geelong, and did not get $1 of funding. It was not because our council didn't apply, not because local businesses didn't apply and not because not-for-profits didn't apply. We had a number of projects go forward but they missed out. And I ask the question: is it because the National Party and the Liberal Party didn't believe that Bendigo was worthwhile, that they just crossed over Bendigo and made very few commitments at the election?

A complaint has also come from my region about the community investment stream. Those announcements haven't been made. Perhaps that's because, in the case of the minister who's involved in making these decisions, there's a question mark over their citizenship. Perhaps the decisions have been delayed because if they made an announcement then they could be challenged. We don't know whether they've been elected and whether they should be sitting in this parliament. These are projects where, again, there are questions about the criteria for this particular stream. You could apply for amounts from $10,000 up to $10 million. How do you compare projects—$10,000 to $10 million? What are the criteria the department has to work with? We can't get access or information about this. A couple of community groups and organisations as well as local governments who've made applications under the stronger investment stream of this particular fund are saying to us that they've had no word. They applied back in March and have had no word. The events, the projects, are going ahead, and they don't know whether they've got funding from the federal government. All they get is a wall of silence.

I urge the government to go back to the model Labor had when we were in government, the Australian regional investment fund, where we worked with local government, we worked with state government, we worked with our RDAs—a model that worked in Victoria—to deliver the projects that our regions need.

Debate adjourned.

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