Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

In my electorate we're fortunate enough to have not one but two exceptional regional universities—Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie and Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour. These institutions provide more than just tertiary education. They have evolved into community centres, providing services outside of the standard educational remit, and now are business hubs, meetings facilities and also health providers. Coffs Harbour's Southern Cross University had the opportunity and the vision to provide a holistic health campus that would not only act as a centre for learning but also relieve the significant pressures on the health system in the wider Coffs coast area. There are, as in many regional and remote locations, significant waiting lists for services such as occupational therapy, and this facility would have catered for those needs while providing a world-class education to regional students—clearly, a win-win.

The former coalition government had budgeted $27.5 million to see this through, as it answered many of the needs for the broader community in a cost-effective way. There would have been no need for costly land acquisitions or a tender process to secure the right management team for these services. It was a shovel-ready project. It had been meticulously planned by a trusted institution over a number of years. Stage 2 of the health campus would have provided a community health clinic with speech and voice labs, mental health and therapy rooms, rehabilitation and exercise studios, and consultation rooms. It would have catered for an additional 800 domestic students to be trained in the regions and likely stay in the regions to practice upon completion of their degree. But, unfortunately, despite our community needing this desperately, the Labor budget ripped it away.

In my electorate, we have relied on funding from programs such as the Building Better Regions Fund to provide capital for crucial large investment projects on the Mid North Coast, such as the world-class dementia village that is currently under construction in Port Macquarie. The funding provided $6.5 million in 2020 to the amazing facility, taking gold standard practices from the Netherlands and replicating them here in an Australian first, catering for a region with some of the highest rates of dementia per capita in the country.

The Building Better Regions Fund that supported a critical facility like this was labelled waste and pork-barrelling. When the announcement came that the Building Better Regions Fund had been slashed, every applicant in my electorate who had taken the time and, in some cases, spent a vast amount of money to apply for the last round reached out in disgust and despair. There were projects such as the Bellingen Shire Council sewerage works—and I appreciate that it might not have been a sexy project. During periods of heavy rainfall or coastal inundation, Bellingen's system overflows, leaching into natural water systems and creating waste and health concerns. This project would have resolved longstanding water contamination issues that had devastated the local aquaculture industry, increased industrial and commercial business opportunities and created the opportunity for increased investment and jobs, as well as assisted in addressing environmental issues.

I ask this new government: how will initiatives such as these be funded in the regions in the future? If this is the well-being budget, is it truly for the nation or is it just for metro areas? By reducing or slashing funds previously allocated to regional areas, how are they expected to cater for the influx of population that we continue to see? Perhaps this government can start an advertising campaign funnelling people who want to move to the regions into Labor seats, as they appear to be the only ones they are willing to support despite the fact they cover less than 10 per cent of my state in New South Wales.

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