Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Seeing we have a Tasmanian contingent here this afternoon, I'm sure the member for Tangney would join me in wondering why we didn't get an acknowledgement that WA's GST is helping the Tasmanian economy considerably. When we get 34c in the dollar, Tasmania gets $1.83. It would have been nice to have an acknowledgement for Western Australians that we contribute massively to the Tasmanian economy.

This my second term in this House, and I've seen two firsts here today. I saw the opposition direct one of their questions to a chairman of a committee, and they were bulldogged by the member for Flynn. That was something I never thought I'd see, but I'm looking forward to seeing it again. The second 'first' was that the opposition used the MPI to ask a Dorothy Dixer. The member for Hunter didn't really seem to have his heart in it, and I can understand that. You're drawing the short straw when you are sent out to put up an MPI about regional Australia and the performance of the government in regional Australia.

I just want to run through a few of the great things that we've done in regional Australia. I'll start with agriculture, which is very close to my heart. We've seen agriculture's gross domestic product grow to $67 billion since we came to government. I give great credit to the government and particularly the member for New England, who was the agriculture minister through that first term in government, for this result. The agricultural competitiveness white paper made some very important investments in agriculture, and we're now seeing that come to fruition.

Alongside the free trade agreements that we signed in the first term of the Turnbull government, we have seen massive increases in our agriculture export products, which is being reflected in higher prices returning to growers. We're seeing wool prices at record highs, as I'm sure you'd be aware, Deputy Speaker Coulton, as a representative of a great wool-growing electorate. Today the eastern market indicator sits at 1,880c, which reflects about 1,200c per kilogram greasy, and that's a very strong return to the woolgrowers across your electorate and my electorate and the rest of Australia.

We also are seeing record red meat prices. We've seen record beef prices in the last 12 months, and we're currently seeing record sheepmeat prices. I believe that is to a very large extent a result of our free trade agreements, particularly the China, Japan and South Korea free trade agreements.

On the tax side: for the 18,000 small businesses in my electorate of O'Connor and the millions of small businesses across Australia, we've reduced the tax rate to 27.5 cents, on a trajectory down to 25 cents. We've also included instant asset write-offs. For assets up to $20,000—and farmers buy many of those assets—they can write them off immediately. We've also increased the upper limit for farm management deposits from $400,000 to $800,000 to better allow farmers, now that we are seeing some profits being made in the industry, to prepare for the tougher times.

There's a 6.7 per cent increase in school funding across the board in my electorate under Gonski 2.0—a great result for regional schools. I will get to what the WA Labor government have done to regional schools in a moment. In aged care, we've provided capital funding for many of the community-run organisations across the electorate. I would run out of time if I were to name them all, but that's another area where we have performed very strongly. I am going to run out of time, but I want to talk about what WA Labor, elected in March 2017, have done in regional WA. The first thing they were going to do was increase the gold royalty tax by 50 per cent to rip $392 million out of the industry, which was estimated to cost 3,000 jobs. We've had $64 million of cuts to education, which included, if you can believe it, an attempt to close the School of the Air. That is the iconic Australian outback organisation which educates kids across the outback of Western Australia. They attempted to close that down. They have now backflipped due to community pressure. But they are still going to cut school camps—two of them in my electorate, in Kalgoorlie and Pemberton. When I go around to the end-of-year school awards, I hear that the highlight of the year for the year 6 students was going to the Pemberton Camp School. The Labor government in WA will cut that school camp. Member for Hunter, please don't come in here to lecture us about regional Australia. (Time expired)

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