Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

When you get a MPI and it has the words 'government' and 'delivery' in it, it has to be a dorothy dixer. Seriously! If we want to talk about delivery, every member on this side could stand here for the full 10 minutes and talk about everything that they've delivered not just nationally but across their electorates. When you look at this year, if you look what happened in this country this year, there have been two major themes. This country has faced great challenges. It's faced a health challenge and it has faced an economic challenge. That has obviously not just been for Australia but for the whole globe. And on both measurements Australia is a standout.

We're a standout on the health challenge. When comparing Australia's health stats on coronavirus—the number of infections and the number of fatalities—with international comparisons, we have done very well. There was a hiccup, and that hiccup was in Victoria, but we'll leave that aside for today. Generally speaking we have done very well as a national government, as have a lot of the state governments. I congratulate the New South Wales state government for their handling of the coronavirus while keeping their borders relatively open compared to a lot of other state governments. They have done very well there.

But, of course, there have been the economic challenges. If you look at the falloff in GDP of a lot of countries and unemployment rates across the globe, which have gone up, again, while we have challenges, this government has done well on a lot of those. We've seen growth figures in the last couple of days and consumer confidence numbers which, while we're not out of the woods, at least give us some cause for great optimism.

To touch on a couple of national issues first, in the last sitting week we had a very similar MPI. I was talking about some of the local projects that I've had the privilege to deliver as an MP for my local region, and I didn't get through them, so I'm going to pick it up from where I left it last time. But first let's go to the budget. We on this side of the House are very conscious that the private sector is the main driving force of our economy. Eight out of 10 jobs are in the private sector. We know that and we are very much doing everything we can to help the private sector grow us out of the situation we're in. The previous assistant minister was talking about the tax cuts that were given to 11½ million people. We know that the Australian public know how to spend their money, and we want more of their money in their pockets.

The JobMaker Hiring Credit—$200 a week to encourage people to employ young people on JobSeeker—was another initiative in the budget. Another great one is the instant tax write-off. I remember when we did this four or five years ago, and it was much smaller in scale with the size of businesses that could apply and the amount. That has been a driving force. We put that onto steroids, again, because we know that the private sector will help us grow out of this. There's much more in the budget. I have the pleasure of having the Minister for Defence Industry behind me—and there's an amazing $270 billion over a 10-year plan for defence industries—and she's a driving force in the economic recovery of this nation as well.

I will pick up on some local deliveries, some of the things that I've had the great pleasure of being part of delivering in my local economy and region. I will just mention it again: the Pacific Highway is the big daddy of those—a $5 billion project, all about reducing fatalities in our region. In fact we always said when we got into government that we wanted this completed by 2020, and guess what? It's going be completed by 2020. We have one section to go: it's about a 10-kilometre section just south of Woodburn. Another section opened last week, so we will have delivered on that promise all about reducing fatalities, a great economic boon as well—2,500 jobs there directly when it was being built. Obviously, it's making our region much closer for tourism, and for our producers and exporters to get their products and services to market.

But let me pick up: I think we arrived in Casino, and I was talking about the wonderful beef capital of Australia, Casino, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker. We were talking about the $40 million saleyards that have been delivered there. We've had bushfires and also drought, and a lot of the stimulus packages we're doing with the New South Wales government. We were in Casino about two or three weeks ago, and part of the stimulus package that we're sending there is to completely revamp the local showgrounds, build a new equestrian centre and upgrade the racecourse. We know showgrounds bring a lot of people and the equestrian centre will bring a whole new group of tourists to our region. That was announced and will be delivered—very exciting.

You can tell the health of a rural town or city by what is going on in the industrial precinct. The industrial precinct is really important. Richmond Valley Council came to me, and they want theirs extended. We're going to upgrade the industrial precinct in Casino—and, again, I'll come back another time and finish this; there's much more to go.

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