Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the member for Gilmore's motion. As a fellow regional MP, I am thankful for her support as a co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Rural and Regional Health. Later this week we will be promoting heart health in parliament. Regional health is in crisis, particularly when it comes to workforce. In my role as shadow assistant minister for regional health, I know how vital primary health care is in regional Australia to prevent the need for acute care services. I am sure the member for Gilmore may well have been glad to have the Prime Minister visit the weekend before last for the New South Wales Country Labor Conference. Country Labor—now that's an endangered species! It's almost a tautology now. Regional Australians have worked Labor out. The Prime Minister claimed at the Country Labor Conference that the Nationals don't represent their seats in regional Australia and that we are nothing like the people we represent. How ridiculous!

Nowhere are Labor's hypocrisy and its tin ear for regional Australia clearer than in health care. One of health minister Mark Butler's first acts as incoming minister in 2022 was to change the distribution priority areas for international medical graduates, bleeding the regions dry of doctors. We desperately need those doctors, yet this motion claims Labor is advancing the lives of regional Australia. In my electorate of Malley, we have towns where there are no doctors and others where the last doctor would retire but is hanging in there because nobody is replacing him and he is committed to the local community. I dare say some will die with their boots on.

I spoke last sitting week about Labor's hunger for regional wealth to fund their election campaigns. Regional Australia is the piggy bank Labor love to smash, whether it is empty or not, to hunt for whatever loose change they can find to fund their metropolitan election priorities. Nowhere is this clearer right now than in their family car tax, where an SUV or LandCruiser will cost between $10,000 and $25,000 more on current estimates to fund the uptake of electric vehicles in Labor, teal and Green seats in the city. The EV uptake in Toorak, Melbourne, is 24 times that of Mildura or Horsham in my electorate. Do you think that Labor's family car tax will change that ratio? No, it will get worse for the people in Mallee, who will be paying that $10,000 for Higgins residents to show off their new EV at the Royal South Yarra Lawn Tennis Club. Nobody seriously thinks EVs will be deployed en masse in the regions. A dealer in my electorate told me as much this week and pointed out the potential tens of thousands of dollars someone will have to pay to replace an EV battery. A visitor to my electorate was recently stranded in their EV after they didn't get the expected 500 kilometres out of their battery. Labor pretend they can go the distance, whether it is EVs or renewable energy policy, when the reality simply does not stack up.

Labor are bloodthirsty to kill the regional golden goose wherever they can, whether it is strangling farms in thousands of kilometres of massive transmission lines, gigantic wind turbines, blanketing farms in solar panels or ripping up prime agricultural land without social licence to extract rare earths for—guess what—EV batteries. Labor's biosecurity levy hits farmers by the costs incurred by importers. As the 2022 Australian Biosecurity Award winner for industry, Trevor Randford, said last week:

Our farmers are contending with high costs of production, high costs of living for primary producer families, high electricity costs, a retail sector out of control, increased levels of legislation and regulations in relation to labour and industrial relations, water buy-backs in the Murray Darling Basin, increased incidences of exotic pests and diseases and now the straw that will break the camel's back—a $50 million annual biosecurity tax.

As Trevor mentioned, Labor buy water from desperate farmers for the environment when the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder doesn't even know what to do with all the water they've bought. The government are now the biggest water holder in the Murray-Darling Basin, and for 15 years they have not used 30 per cent of their entitlements each year. Why do they need more? Oh, yes—to stave off the Greens in Sydney and Melbourne from Labor seats.

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