Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to highlight what remains one of the most important issues facing many communities I represent along the New South Wales border with Victoria. Places like Wentworth-Mildura, Euston-Robinvale, Murray Downs and Swan Hill, Moama-Echuca, Mulwala with Yarrawonga and the main city in electorate, Albury, which has a long association with Wodonga in Victoria. All of these are what could be termed cross-border communities. While each is unique in that they sit in one state or the other and belong to a separate New South Wales or Victorian local government area, they are also unique in relying on each other to grow and prosper.

When I use the term 'community', this is largely from a perspective of the people who live in these areas. In so many ways, our system of government in Australia is blindly making it harder for them to get ahead. Whether it is the vital role played by our emergency services and police on either side of the Murray, through to different transport rules and regulations, separate TAFE qualifications for our tradies, Responsible Service of Alcohol certificates, taxi licences—the list goes on and on.

The Master Builders Association recently wrote a lengthy report on the difficulties they face in trying to do business on one side of the border or the other—and this 196-page document is just a summary of the issues. Just recently we've seen the introduction of a container recycling deposit scheme in New South Wales but not in Victoria. Yet Victoria is moving to ban plastic single-use shopping bags this year, but this will not be law in New South Wales. Then there is the celebrated case from a few years back where a good Samaritan discovered an injured koala on the side of the road on Victoria's side of the border, drove him back to their home in New South Wales only to find they could not drop the animal into an animal welfare shelter because it was found in another state.

You might think from these examples the problem might be a bridge too far. So where do we go from here? We have seen some progress in the field of health. In Albury-Wodonga, we now have a separate single health system operating hospitals in both cities, as well as other health campuses and facilities in both states. Under Federation, a merged service needs to be administered by one state or the other and so it fell to Victoria: Albury-Wodonga Health is a division of the Victorian Department of Health. The boundaries of our government's recently developed Primary Health Networks follow state lines, yet because of the unique situation at Albury-Wodonga Health, the Victorian-based Murray Primary Health Network now traverses the border into New South Wales. There are other loose cross-border health arrangements down river as well, helping coordinate patients wherever primary and secondary services are located. The local headspace centres have followed suit. Why does this occur? And, more importantly, why does it work? It's because in the real world people work to solve problems rather than create them. These real people don't actually go about making the border of New South Wales and Victoria a problem. They don't have to. We created the problem for them!

In that summary report of 196 pages the Master Builders point to the establishment of a Cross Border Commissioner in New South Wales in 2012. They argue the New South Wales commissioner actually does good work, but his progress is slow because—you guessed it!—Victoria doesn't have a similar cross-border commissioner to work with—at least not yet. I am delighted to see my coalition colleagues in the state of Victoria have pledged to create such a role if they are elected later this year. Do we need to wait? No, the current Victorian government could introduce such a position tomorrow. Or we could take a leaf out of the book of Albury and Wodonga councils, which have recently ratified a joint 'one community' approach to developing their interstate interests.

I want to thank the previous minister for cities, the member for Hume, who met with the mayors late last year and expressed admiration for the two cities in working as one to benefit the whole region. I hope to work with the new minister, the Member for Bradfield, in progressing some important proposals in the coming months.

The main impediment for future Albury-Wodonga development getting the nod from the Commonwealth is, rather ironically, that both cities must also receive support for their ideas from their respective state governments. I do urge both New South Wales and Victoria to recognise their respective borders, as they have done since 1855 and we have done since Federation. Just because something is happening on the border, New South Wales shouldn't be referring the problem to Victoria, and Victoria shouldn't be referring the problem to New South Wales, as so often happens. But I also urge them to recognise the border as a line on a map, rather than a roadblock to better progress for my communities at the edge of these two great states.

House adjourned at 19:59

See this speech in context