Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party, Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

will commercialise raw material supplies, allowing firms to move close to their raw material supplies, securing the supply chain, commercialising those raw materials and bringing with them jobs and growth and prosperity to country Australia.

We've also taken the handbrake off public sector decentralisation, meaning that departments no longer have to find internal budget savings to make the move to country Australia. And we've changed the definition of decentralisation so that it no longer supports relocations from the inner city to the outer suburbs of big cities. We are turbocharging the government's decentralisation agenda, and there is an enormous amount of interest in decentralisation. Those people wanting to move from the city to the country were once called tree changers or sea changers, but Bernard Salt coined a new phrase in The Australian recently. Those folks are now known as VESPAs: 'virus escapees seeking provincial Australia'. We want the VESPAs to come to country Australia. We want them to come to regional Australia and help build the future of our country communities.

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