Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it passing strange that the members of the coalition always think they're best for regional and rural Australia. The facts tell a different story. During the Howard years the regional development department was actually abolished by your mob, and $103 million of a regional roads program was diverted to city roads, including $2 million for that wonderful country road, Campbell Parade in Bondi. That's the great job you were doing for regional Australia. What's more, most people living in regional and rural Australia are on relatively low incomes. This government, as we know, is no friend to wage-earners, with cuts to penalty rates, and flat wages. That's what you're doing for people in regional Australia who are on wages: flat wages and cuts to penalty rates. Many people in regional communities require income assistance, such as the pension or a carers payment. These are the very people that the people opposite are demonising and targeting in their crackdowns. People living in regional and rural Australia require access to services, such as health and education, which those opposite want to privatise, casualise and move into their cities. That has the effect of diminishing social capital and making it harder for country people to volunteer or join their local footy or bowls club. The work experience kid for Maranoa, good on him, he's having a bit of a go, the chickenhawk who squawks! Often I'll hear him in the chamber interjecting, 'Government funding doesn't create jobs; private business creates jobs.' I have news for the member for Maranoa: if he really believes that, he'll give back the hundreds of millions that various governments over the years have given to infrastructure projects in his electorate and others across the country.

Mr Littleproud interjecting—

Hand it all back, that's all government money, mate. At every turn the coalition fails regional Australians. Right now we're seeing before our very eyes the rollout of a substandard national broadband network which is delivering second-class broadband to regional Australia. There can be no better illustration of how the members opposite are failing regional Australians than what they have done to the National Broadband Network. Labor started the NBN in regional Australia with fibre to the premises. People forget this. Labor was making the point that country folk shouldn't have to expect second-rate broadband and shouldn't have to wait until the capital cities were done first. That's what Labor did.

What did they do? As soon as they got in, they reversed it. Labor rolled out fibre to the premises in Sorell and Midway Point in my electorate and in Smithton in the electorate of Braddon. It's not often that Sydney folk are told to wait at the back of the line, but we had a point to make—that people in regional Australia matter. That was forgotten by this mob. They came in in 2013, ripped it up, and said, 'Folk in regional Australia can get the second-class stuff.' They put more people on satellite, put more people on wireless towers and cut the fibre to the premises, so now people in regional Australia are stuck with second-rate broadband. They're going to be even further behind the capital cities. Capital cities get the gold standard, but people and businesses in regional Australia are not nearly as competitive anymore.

When it comes to Tasmania, the idea that this parliament should note the commitment of this government to regional Australia just rings hollow. In the 2017 budget, which boasted of being a national infrastructure budget, there was not one extra dollar for new projects in Tasmania. Every dollar allocated to my state was for projects previously announced, many of them initiated by Labor governments. Tasmanians can guess where we figure in the Turnbull government's thinking, when the Treasurer failed to even mention Tasmania in his speech. So no, Member for Capricornia, who has left the chamber, no, Member for Maranoa, I do not commend this government for its supposed commitment to regional Australia, because it has demonstrated that, when it comes to regional Tasmanians, it has none.

Then we come to the Community Development Grants, which under this government take pork-barrelling to Ninja Warrior level: 130 to one—what a ratio! Poor old Ros Kelly got bloody—excuse my language—raked over the coals over sports rorts, wasn't it? You guys are in a whole new universe, the Ninja Warriors of pork-barrelling. This is government money for all Australians, and you're using it to shore up your seats in the most egregious, disgusting, disgraceful display of pork-barrelling this country has ever seen. You should hang your heads in shame.

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