Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

While we are still in the midst of fighting these fires, we really need to aggressively address the recovery issues now, and so there are a number of ideas that I've been gleaning from the community that I want to put forward in this first instalment, as a suggestion to the government.

We've been seeing a lot of this relief stuff come through but unfortunately now it is taking business away from those small businesses that really need to be getting back up and running. I would like to suggest that people adopt a voucher approach or a ticket approach to support those businesses and encourage people to come to them to buy their goods. We had a situation in Cobargo, for example, where the co-op there that sells poly pipe was being asked to distribute it for free—they did it, but we need to now start supporting those small businesses locally by channelling things through them. A good suggestion is tax deduction for accommodation in fire-affected areas. This would be a great way of getting an immediate impact by encouraging people to come now to take the holidays that they need to, particularly over the winter season when there's going to be some new activities and festivals introduced to try to bridge the gap between the summer seasons. It would be good if we could extend BAS relief to those businesses until next summer, because they really need to bridge that gap, as I mentioned, and that would be very helpful.

I'd just like to pass on to the government: walk away from the decentralisation policy. It doesn't create new jobs in the regions. It's stealing from one region to create a job in another. My region depends so much on the lifeblood of the travelling and driving holiday-makers from the Canberra, Queanbeyan, Yass and Murrumbateman area, and it really needs them right now. So please walk away from this decentralisation policy.

On the assistance that the government could provide, it would be great if through the next few months it could step in to supplement—and replace in many cases—the sponsorship that local small businesses would normally provide to festivals like the Narooma Oyster Festival, which they just won't be able to do for a number of months. In that vein the government could also temporarily fund project managers over this period to help implement these new festivals and activities that are going to be needed to keep these small businesses alive, otherwise many will fold.

We need to have small-business advisers and Centrelink people in the field now, in temporary shopfronts, in a number of locations right around our region. It doesn't have to be permanent but the biggest feedback I'm getting is just how tough it is to navigate online and other processes to access the assistance—it's just a nightmare. A small-business adviser or Centrelink person in those key locations in towns around the region is very important.

I want to see us double the number of Indigenous rangers so we can get them involved in the cultural burning program and also get our Indigenous youth employed.

There are a lot of infrastructure projects we could be looking to bring forward like the Brindabella road across to Tumut, the rail project to Eden, the caravan park at Tumbarumba, the Tumut airport, the Bobeyan Road, B-double access from the port of Eden up to the Monaro Highway and the wave attenuator at Eden. These are quick-fix projects which would be real value adds to the economy in general and very good investments and would get work happening right now. We need to restore funding to the Destination Southern NSW organisation. Its funding was cut and we really need marketing support now, so restoring that funding would be terrific.

In particular, I want to focus on the Carbon Farming Initiative and the use of climate change as part of this recovery process. We can't resuscitate our timber industry unless we enhance the Carbon Farming Initiative to allow international trading, because investors aren't going to get involved when they have to wait 11 or 25 years for a return. The Australian Forest Products Association and the Softwoods Working Group all really want to see this happen. An international trading regime would attract investors so they could start earning money from replanting forests from day one because the forests would be a carbon sink. That would be the short term fix they really need right now.

In addition to that, farmers can come on board by offering up sequestration options on their properties. Our plan was to create a timber co-op so that farmers could assign less productive or marginal parts of their property to timber plantation and, similarly, earn money from the sequestration opportunities that offers for, potentially, local investors, because there's a lot of money sloshing around in our managed funds—$3 trillion. A lot of that could be directed and focused on the sorts of climate change options that create the new economy. The fifth industrial revolution is going to be about decarbonising and new energy sources and new farming techniques. We can get started on that right now. So I really urge the government to at least carve out the Carbon Farming Initiative as part of that effort.

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