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

To have lessons about rural and regional Australia from the National Party, the party that's abandoned the regions, is just beyond the pale. This is a party that has voted multiple times against a banking royal commission, against investigations into banks that are hurting farmers and hurting regional communities. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming, after the work done by this side of the House, into getting a banking royal commission up and running. Look at what that banking royal commission has uncovered: crime after crime after crime. Yet they sat over there with their Liberal counterparts and did nothing for years. You should be ashamed. The same party voted against action on penalty rates. I'll tell you what: young people in my community who work in hospitality, retail and other services across the regions need penalty rates not just as pocket money but to survive, to pay the rent and to put food on the table.

So don't sit there, National Party, and lecture us about rural and regional Australia. You haven't been doing your job, and that's why people are voting more and more to elect Labor MPs into regional seats. Shortland, Richmond, Hunter, Paterson, Bass, Braddon, Lyons, Newcastle, Whitlam, Herbert, Solomon, Lingiari, Dobell—and I'm sure there are more. We are on the march for rural and regional Australia, and we're coming for you.

I will just say this about the drought in New South Wales and Queensland: I'm proud to say that Tasmanians have really delivered the goods here. Dairy farmer Michael Perkins, his mate Robbie Edwards, dairy farmer Paul Lambert, Glenn Phillips in Smithton, and Ruby Daly from Marion Bay potatoes in my electorate are all doing their bit to help the farmers and regional communities who are doing it very tough out there in New South Wales and Queensland—in some respect repaying the debt to mainlanders from when Tasmania suffered a drought and also floods in recent years. This is what rural and regional Australians do. They act together . They work together for the common good.

I've got a long speech here, which I have completely blown, on the myriad failures of this government on rural and regional Australia, and I'll try to get to some of it. But I tell you what: I'll come to the NBN, because those opposite have been saying about the NBN that we're not telling the truth. Well, let me say this. This is the recorded Hansard of my question to the NBN yesterday:

I … want to confirm what you were saying … I represent a country electorate. A lot of my people are on fixed wireless. I want to be crystal clear: are you saying that, if somebody who lives in the centre of Hobart and is on a 50-meg bundled service and paying $45 wholesale moves out to my electorate and gets a fixed wireless tower, under the new bundled service you are talking about they would be paying $65 wholesale? Is that the essence of what you're saying?

Mr Stephen Rue of NBN Co said:

If the RSP chooses to purchase a 50-20 bundled product from us, that would be $65, yes.

So there it is in Hansard: a big difference between what NBN Co is going to charge people on fixed wireless, $65 wholesale, and what they're charging people in the city on a fixed line, which is $45 wholesale. That was last night. Then today we've had the press release from the minister: 'Oh, no, nothing to see here. We're not really doing that. That was just sort of a plan—maybe something we were thinking about.' I truly hope that the government and NBN Co have changed their minds and have backflipped on this, because that means that, thanks to Labor questions at the committee last night, Labor have saved country people $240 a year on their NBN—240 bucks a year, a Turnbull tax, a tax from Malcolm Turnbull because of his rank incompetence in delivering a workable NBN. Labor has saved country people $240 a year that they otherwise would have had to pay. I'm sure The Nationals will be thanking us for that—certainly, there were none of them there.

Health, schools, universities, penalty rates—wherever you look, in every single instance the National and Liberal parties are failing rural and regional Australians. From tomorrow, one in four families will be worse off under the Liberals' unfair childcare system, which will disproportionately affect women and families in rural Australia.

See this speech in context