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

A very good question. How long did the 90-day review take? It took 206 days to complete that review. It would be funny but for the consequences of that review. What we saw was the slashing and dicing of essential infrastructure programs and social programs within National Party held electorates—not Labor electorates; National Party electorates. I will give you an example of some of them that were slashed in my electorate and I will tell you about the one that hurts me the most. That is the slashing of $5 million for a veterans centre—in fact, not just one but three veterans centres. The usual model is $5 million for one, but they had worked together and had worked out a way to have three. Do you know why we need three? It is because my electorate has the largest number of veterans in New South Wales. We have 9,000 veterans, and then you include their families because the families are the ones that have to prop them up when they need the help in the absence of the veterans centre. So they took away that $5 million, and what did they do with it? They put it in a Labor seat, in Richmond, which has half the number of veterans. Veterans need to be above politics, and the first thing that we need to do is allocate that money for a veterans centre in Calabar.

The other funding they took away was $5 million for Wrights Road in Port Macquarie. If you live in Port Macquarie, you know what I'm talking about. You have congestion not just in the morning and not just in the afternoon; it's at all times of the day. The worst part of it is that it's not just congestion; it's right outside the base hospital. I was talking to a nurse the other day. It takes her 45 minutes to get out of the hospital. Imagine if there is a medical emergency. Imagine if the congestion is so bad that the ambulance can't get through or somebody trying to get to the hospital can't. But it was deemed not a priority. The infrastructure minister, Catherine King, has not been there. She has not come up and had a look, yet it was gutted.

We've seen applications refused over the past three years. There was the Valla Urban Growth Area, which would see up to 7,700 lots opened up. Labor talk a big game about housing, and the local council put in an application to open this up under the Regional Precincts and Partnerships Program, but they were denied. They were rejected. That was 7,700 lots. There was the Sewering Coastal Villages project in Bellingen. Sewerage is a basic service. An application under the Sewering Coastal Villages project was deemed not a priority. Well, the people in Bellingen, Repton and Valla consider it a priority when their sewers backflow or they can't get clean water.

You have a choice. You have a choice at the next election to make sure that that funding comes back into the regions, and that choice is to vote Nationals.

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