Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite astounded at the Labor Party bringing on this MPI today about rural and regional Australia. It's always amusing to listen to the member for Whitlam talking about regional Australia. I know he has a great knowledge of regional Australia—he drives through it on his way from Canberra to Wollongong every couple of weeks and has a clear understanding of what's going on! He comes in here without a real issue but with a made-up issue, about telecommunications. I've been here for a while. I sat on that side of the House while his party removed the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund and gave people $900 cash flashes to put through the poker machines and buy things from Kmart—all gone; not one mobile phone tower. But the people at Yellow Mountain, west of Condobolin—a vast area that had been neglected by the opposition—are now getting telecommunications services thanks to the Mobile Black Spot Program.

The member for Whitlam mentioned drought. I've got to know a bit about drought. I was a farmer for 33 years before I came here, and I've been through a few. This is as bad as it's been. I've seen as bad as this, but it's as bad as it's been. I can tell you farmers are handling this a lot better because of the policies put in by the member for New England when he was the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources.

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

I can point you, Member for Hunter, to grain storages, water systems and farms that have been properly fenced because of the tax incentives that were put in place for that white paper. You've got to be able to speak about regional Australia because you understand regional Australia, and we don't see any of that from the other side. I sat in this place—I think it was in 2008—when the member for Watson as agriculture minister said, 'We're not going to use the word 'drought' anymore.' Remember that? He said, 'We're going to change 'drought' for 'dryness'. We've just got dryness now. We'll put in a bit of a $60,000 scheme.' Remember the scheme in Western Australia, where they were going to do trials about farmers managing dryness? That was it. That was their drought policy.

This is not a place for negative speeches. I want to talk about the positives in regional Australia. The member for Dobell might want to send her young people to the electorate of Parkes, where youth unemployment is in single figures. The unemployment level of Dubbo is 2.2 per cent. Last year 58 Indigenous kids did the HSC at Dubbo College Senior Campus and have gone into employment or education because of the funding of things like Clontarf, Girls Academy, Sista Speak—all these things that the federal government is funding for young people in regional Australia. She might want to go across the road a bit, to the campus of Dubbo Base Hospital, and have a look at the construction of the cancer centre—thanks to the help of the member for New England once again. That cancer centre is going to serve the people of western New South Wales. Go a little bit further round, to the medical school, where country kids can do their full training—from students right through to specialisation—in the bush. It is training doctors for the bush.

There is the Inland Rail. We heard a lot of talk about the Inland Rail. I can actually take you out there now and show you where the tracks have been laid out, where the earth's been dug up, for that corridor of commerce that's going to link Melbourne with Brisbane, right through—

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