Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Speaker has received a letter from the honourable member for Wide Bay proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The impact of Government policies on regional communities.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On election night the Prime Minister told the nation that he had been elected to govern for all Australians. But seven months and one day later it is obvious that some Australians were not included in that promise. I refer to the people of non-metropolitan Australia who have been kicked around like a park football by the new Labor government.

The Treasurer when he introduced his budget described it as a true Labor budget—and it was. This Labor Treasurer spat out his venom on regional communities in the same style that Labor treasurers have at state and Commonwealth level for years. Two-thirds of the pre-budget funding cuts were in rural and regional Australia, with funding slashed or abolished for programs like drought research, job training, rail upgrading and alternative fuel programs. But the budget itself was even worse, with a billion-dollar attack on country Australians. In just three areas—regional development, agriculture and telecommunications—well over $1 billion was cut from programs when that money should have been spent and be being spent now in regional communities.

A number of regional programs worth $426 million provided by the previous government were cut back, and a new program worth only $176 million replaced them. Existing agricultural programs worth $334 million were replaced by new programs worth just $220 million. Labor scrapped the $959 million OPEL contract to provide fast broadband to all Australians and replaced it with expenditure of just $271 million. People who should be getting fast broadband speeds now will have to wait years for the Labor program to come to fruition—if it is ever built. And it is the people in regional Australia that miss out because Labor has so bungled its broadband philosophies.

Labor introduced Caring for our Country, a $2 billion program for environmental and other works around the nation. They have made a great play of that $2 billion expenditure. However, it is $1 billion less than was provided under the NHT and the NAP by the previous government. The regional catchment authorities have had their budgets cut by 40 per cent. They are laying off staff. They were lulled into a false sense of security by the minister’s suggestion that they could apply for some future funding, and that would be shared out amongst them. Now we find out that amount of money is just $25 million and not just the catchment management authorities are going to apply for that money but indeed a wide range of other organisations—local government and industry groups—will also be competing for that funding. The reality is that in spite of Labor’s rhetoric about their care for the environment they have slashed $1 billion off the available funding.

On Saturday the people of Gippsland are going to go to the polls to elect a new member of parliament. Despite the spin we sometimes get from Labor head office, Labor think they can win this seat. The Prime Minister has been down there twice and it would not surprise me if he popped up again before the election in Gippsland. He has written to every family in the electorate to support Labor’s candidate because he wants another member of his cheer squad to be sitting behind him in Parliament House. When he waves his wand he wants another person to say, ‘How high do I jump?’

The people of Gippsland need somebody who will stand up for them. Gippsland needs someone who will be a voice for them in Canberra, not Canberra’s voice in Gippsland. They want somebody who will stand up for people in regional Australia. The government has already got far too much power, and regional Australians need strong voices that will stand up and be counted for people who live outside the capital cities. This government has made it absolutely clear that it cares nothing for those who live outside the capital cities. And yet the Prime Minister had the gall to write to everybody in Gippsland and recommend that they vote for the Labor candidate because he would be concerned about their jobs. This is the same Mr McCubbin who recently said in his local media that the drought which has gripped the region and much of Australia was caused by the operation of the Latrobe Valley power stations. The guy who is supposed to be standing up for the jobs of people who live and work in the Gippsland area says that the problems of global warming and the drought in the nation are all caused by their own power stations—the power stations in the Latrobe Valley. Let me quote his exact words:

Perhaps the fact we are so tied to coal fired power is the reason we’ve been in drought for six years ... Compared to the rest of the world we are really slack in terms of what we churn out of coal fired power stations.

These are outlandish views but particularly outlandish coming from a man who wants to represent the power workers of the Latrobe Valley. If you thought that these views and this lack of concern for the power workers of the Latrobe Valley were perhaps flippant, what about the Prime Minister’s own comments today in answer to a question from the member who will be speaking shortly? That was another demonstration that Labor is quite happy to trade off the jobs of the power workers of the Latrobe Valley to entertain the people in the cities.

The Prime Minister has clearly panicked on his plans for an emissions-trading scheme. They have had these secret midnight cabinet meetings so that no public servant will even know that they are on—or were they just kept waiting so long that they all went home? But they are having these secret meetings to try to develop some kind of emissions-trading scheme. The Prime Minister is becoming increasingly irrational in his statements on emissions trading. Today he even said that we are all going to get dengue fever if we do not have an emissions-trading scheme. How illogical is that? And he talks about other people having a scare campaign. To suggest that we are all going to get dengue fever unless we embrace Labor’s emissions-trading scheme is clearly a nonsense.

Climate change is a serious issue and it needs to be taken seriously, and there needs to be a serious response. We need to promote the use of vehicles and machinery that are more energy efficient, and certainly continue to reduce our carbon emissions to create a greener future. But we will not do this with half-baked schemes that destroy thousands of jobs, drive up inflation and leave Australia at a long-term disadvantage compared with competitors around the world. How can pensioners live on $273 a week if they are also going to have to face higher petrol prices, higher electricity prices and higher costs of living as a result of Labor’s plans for regional Australia?

The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is amongst those who do not seem to be able to make up their minds about whether Labor wants to increase prices of petrol or put them down. A few days ago he was quoted as saying that fuel had to be a part of the emissions-trading scheme. Today in question time he was trying to back out of his commitments in that regard. But the people of Gippsland need to know that Labor are the party of higher fuel prices. They are the party that promised to put downward pressure on prices but they have failed to deliver.

This is the same minister, Mr Albanese, who told the House last week, in one of his typical tirades of abuse against people who live in regional areas, how dreadful it was that the previous government had approved $60,000 in funding under the Regional Partnerships program to upgrade public toilets in Lock, a small, struggling country town in South Australia. It is the kind of community that needs a little bit of help with important projects. And this was not just a routine toilet block; this was an innovative development that included the use of stormwater. It was an environmentally friendly project that would have been a model for people in other places. But the minister stuck his boot into the little town of Lock, accused them of rorting and accused them of being associated with programs that were completely unsatisfactory.

I have to say that I was somewhat astonished therefore that 48 hours later the Minister for Sport went down to Gippsland to announce $160,000 for the redevelopment of the Traralgon West sports complex and that project included the building of new public toilets. So new public toilets can be built in Traralgon West—that is okay—but when the little town of Lock wants to have funding provided for a toilet block that is a scandal. Labor goes down into Gippsland and announces $160,000 for a toilet block. I have no problem with a toilet block being built in Traralgon West. It is undoubtedly a very worthwhile project. But the government cannot criticise the previous government for funding a regional project in a little town and then go out and do exactly the same thing—except that they spent double the money—in a project of their own.

I welcome the arrival of the minister for infrastructure. I have just been drawing attention to the fact that—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Leader of the National Party has suggested that I said a few days ago that fuel must be—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House will—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a point of order.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House will resume his seat. That is not a point of order. If you have been misrepresented, there are forms of the House in which that can be addressed.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I am using them.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you are not. The Leader of the House will resume his seat. I will rule on his point of order. It is not a point of order. If he has been misrepresented, he can use the correct forms of the House.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Robert interjecting

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a further point of order. Mr Deputy Speaker, you heard quite clearly the member for Fadden continually make interjections across this chamber that are offensive. I ask that they be withdrawn.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not hear, with all the other hubbub, what the interjection was.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the Leader of the House was offended, I withdraw.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Sport went down to the electorate and announced $160,000 of funding for a toilet block when the minister had criticised the previous government for a much smaller grant a little while ago. Is it any wonder that the media are calling this ‘sports rort II’?

As soon as he got into office, the minister for regional development, who comes from a Sydney electorate, closed the regional offices of his own department, set up a Better Cities unit to occupy the time of his staff and abolished the Regional Partnerships program, the Growing Regions program and the Sustainable Regions program. He set up a new Better Regions program, but this is a program that no-one who lives in a non-Labor electorate can even apply for. Ninety per cent of all the projects to be funded are in Labor electorates and Labor target seats. No-one else can even apply. This is not better regions; this is better rorts. He is the king of rorts; the man who invented the Fort Street rort; the man who rerouted the railway line through his own electorate at a cost of $300 million. This is the man who criticises other people for not appropriately spending money—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I ask that that be withdrawn. It is just not true. You cannot just make things up.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House will resume his seat.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry that the minister is so sensitive about these matters. Perhaps when he makes criticism of regional organisations and accuses community groups of being rorters he ought to also be a bit more sensitive. The reality is that the Labor Party have demonstrated that they have no interest in people who live in regional communities. Projects will not be assessed on their merits. The only projects that are being funded are those that are in key Labor marginal seats. Is it any coincidence, therefore, that we suddenly get these announcements in the seat of Gippsland, where previously there was no interest?

The people of Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley contribute a great deal to Victoria and to our nation. Yet just today the Victorian Auditor-General released a report showing that the regional road network in Victoria has deteriorated under the Bracks and the Brumby state Labor governments. Labor is refocusing its road expenditure away from regional areas and into the cities. A classic example is the road funding in the seat of Gippsland, where the Labor Party have slashed the funding committed by the previous government to the Princes Highway upgrade. That is what Labor think of people who live in regional Australia. They have no interest when there is no election being held in the area, just some passing comments.

The reality is that Labor are not able to address the issues of regional Australia because they do not care. They have been told that their policies will not lower fuel prices in regional Australia but they have no solution. The Prime Minister admitted that he had no plan to lower fuel prices in regional areas. He has no plan to meet the extra costs— (Time expired)

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am surprised. Today has been a day on which, for reasons that are quite proper, the Leader of the Opposition was not able to be present for most of question time. One would have normally expected the Leader of the National Party to have taken a position of some eminence in this place, given that the Leader of the Opposition was absent. Did we see that? No. Why didn’t we see that? Because the Leader of the National Party is simply incapable of getting beyond his own past. The matter of importance that we have for discussion today is the impact of government policies on regional communities. But this is not about that, and they know it is not about that. It is actually about going back to the trough and back to pork barrels.

Do you know what is most important? The very first document that we got in this place as new members of parliament was the Australian National Audit Office’s review of the program which the Leader of the National Party ran, the performance audit review of Regional Partnerships, which is damning—caustic—in the way in which it describes the maladministration and the lack of focus on proper public policy outcomes in this program. The Howard government abolished the Department of Regional Development—got rid of it—in 1996. Why did they get rid of it? Because regional development was not important to the Howard government at all. Former Howard government Ministers Truss and Vaile did not even discover regional Australia; they discovered a pork barrel. They were never about regional development; they were always about pork.

What do we mean by only being about pork? We often hear from those opposite about the Regional Partnerships program, which is what this debate today is about. It is not about regional Australia; it is about hankering after your past and trying to make good the appalling record that you left behind. For instance, the Leader of the Nationals said on ABC Broken Hill radio on 8 May:

Now this program was specifically designed to provide things in small communities. Big cities have got the resources and can often provide, on a commercial basis, projects which are simply unviable in regional areas.

That is what the Leader of the National Party said to regional Australia not eight weeks ago, but what do we see from the program approved by the former government? We see $1.5 billion to the North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club in the 2007 election. (Quorum formed) This debate is not at all about development in regional Australia; this debate is merely about the National Party once again trying to re-present the horrible litany of incompetence, maladministration and pork-barrelling as evidenced by the National Audit Office’s report into the Regional Partnerships program. Once again, we see the National Party masquerading as the protectors of regional Australia.

But the Leader of the National Party did raise a very important matter and that is the issue of the by-election in Gippsland on this weekend. I would like to place on record in this place before the Australian people that Labor’s candidate, Darren McCubbin, is an excellent candidate. He is 46 years old and well known in Gippsland. He is known for bringing theatre to the people of Gippsland and fostering leadership qualities in the young people of the region. He is a writer, a producer, an actor, a director and the coordinator of just about every festival in the region. When we describe the make-up of candidates who are ideal for regional Australia, Darren McCubbin is just that candidate. He is the current Mayor of Wellington Shire. He has spent more than half of his life in Sale, where he established his entertainment business 17 years ago. Darren is married to his wife, Jill. She is the daughter of a local dairy farmer, and they have two daughters, Marni, five, and Ella, three. They live on a small rural block on the edge of Longford.

Darren was born in Yallourn. He saw a lot of Victoria as a child, because his father was a teacher who liked to travel a lot. He attended Hallam High School then Monash University, completing an honours degree in science in 1982. He also has a Diploma of Education from Monash Gippsland. He really is a local boy. He is a boy who knows that part of the world like the back of his hand. He was being trained as a forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology but decided to return to the country to take up a career as a secondary school mathematics and physics teacher in 1984 with Sale Catholic College.

From 1992 to 1995, Darren organised the Sale Mainstreet Program, which was designed to breathe life back into the local retail shopping strip. He formed the Wishbone Children’s Theatre for children’s shows, and The Murder Company, which hosts social and corporate murder and mystery nights. His company produces more than 250 performances each year locally, throughout Australia and in the Asia Pacific. Darren has been director of several local festivals, including the Mallacoota Festival of the Southern Ocean, the Stratford Shakespeare on the River Festival and the Bairnsdale youth festival. He also directed the Sale 150th celebrations and the Sale Water Water Arts Festival and was a performer at the Buchan blues festival. He is an Australian champion town crier as well.

This is a man with real qualities, real capacity to represent his committee and a real connection to regional Australia. Darren has been a councillor since 2003 and was elected mayor in 2007. He chairs a number of council boards, including for the Stephenson Park recreation reserve, Swing Bridge, Sale Netball relocation committee and the RSL memorials committee, and is on the board of the Wellington Youth Network. Darren graduated from the Gippsland Community Leadership Program in 2002 and sits on the board of the Australian Technical College in Gippsland. He is President of the Sale Theatre Company, Treasurer of Gippsland Regional Arts—Sale and Treasurer of Wellington Residents Against Toxic Hazards. He is a member of the committee of the federal government’s Festivals Australia panel and was made its chair in 2007.

He is a candidate who knows his community. He is a candidate who cares for his community and he is a candidate who, when he is elected on Saturday, will stand for something in this place. He will stand for regional Australia. He will stand for regional communities and he will not be cowed by the National Party and the way in which they cowardly bring into this place arguments which are merely designed to make look good that which the National Audit Office has itself said was a disgrace.

What we saw under the Regional Partnerships program, which the leader of the National Party seeks to defend in this place today, was taxpayers’ money paid to companies that were going broke despite, on many occasions, departmental advice not to pay that money. That happened several times. One would be surprised. I have said it many times in this place: the National Party simply have no capacity for trial and error learning. When you make a payment to a company that goes broke, once might be described as a mistake; twice is silly. But it happened time and time again. It happened with Indigo Cheese, it happened with Coonawarra Gold and it happened with Tailwaggers Essential Pet Food Pty Ltd. Under the Regional Partnerships program an astounding 16 projects were terminated because they failed to get off the ground. The House has heard of many of those 16 projects, but one—Tailwaggers—stands out for particular attention. A company called Tailwaggers Essential Pet Food was in Walgett, which was then in the seat of Gwydir, held by John Anderson, former leader of the National Party and at the time the minister responsible for the Regional Partnerships program. So the National Party have real form on this issue. Now we know how often the National Party’s tail has been wagged by the Liberal Party dog when it comes to regional programs. We have known that for quite some time.

What we know about Tailwaggers is that $246,477 was awarded to them. What we know is that after two years Tailwaggers failed to deliver any pet food at all. When we look at the program, when we look at how it was administered and when we look at the beneficiaries, we do not just see pork, we see pork and we see rorts, and the National Party knows that. Members opposite have told us many times that the Regional Partnerships program was about small grants for small projects. They tell us that it funded small community organisations, but we know that in reality it funded commercial enterprises too. We know that it was treated merely as a ‘free money’ option by businesses that could turn up to the door of the National Party and get ‘free money’—interest free, tax free—for almost any purpose. And if you ever believed that this fund was to be used for small community organisations—I have mentioned in this place before the correspondence that I have received from companies that believed they had got a promise, believed that they had a cheque in the mail, believed that their money was all done and dusted—I have one here, again from an ethanol plant. This ethanol plant believed that the former government had promised it funding. You know, the truth of it is that on so many occasions the former government did promise funding; they just did not complete or sign contracts. They just did not complete the paperwork. Why? Because on so many occasions what they were looking to do was merely win the votes, not actually invest in regional Australia.

It is actually a good thing that they did not invest in this particular ethanol plant. Here is the real grab in what the ethanol plant says to us. It says that they are particularly angry because not getting the ‘free money’ from the government means that they will not be able to get access to ‘large profits given the price of oil and fuel’. So here we have a National Party thinking it is about regional development, when in fact it uses ‘free money’ from the taxpayer, from a whole bunch of hardworking Australians, to support what? A company that was merely looking to make large amounts of money from oil and from fuel given the very high prices that Australians are now paying for petrol. It was not an enterprise designed, according to this letter, to build jobs; it was not an enterprise designed to create infrastructure in the community; it was not an enterprise designed to create a future for our regional communities; it was an enterprise designed merely to take advantage of the very high prices that currently prevail for hydrocarbons.

In this place, from time to time, you are surprised by what people say. I have never been surprised at the willingness of the National Party to repeatedly attempt to defend the indefensible; to repeatedly come into this place to use the time of this place to try to make good that which cannot be made good; to try to disguise the horrific public administration that is demonstrated in the Australian National Audit Office review of Regional Partnerships; and to try to pretend that somehow grants that were made without applications being filled in, grants that were made for companies that never produced a thing, grants that were made to seats that were held by the National Party members, grants that were made against the advice of the government department for which the minister was personally responsible were valid. And to cap it all off, today, on a day when the Leader of the Nationals should have come into this place, effectively as the Leader of the Opposition, and stamp his authority on this place as that person, he did not. He failed. (Time expired)

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have listened very carefully to the member for Brand and I have never been more disappointed in an individual performance in this place and it is for this reason: unlike me, he does not know these names. He does not know Jane Rowe, he does not know Keith and Kath Hamilton, he does not know Rohan Fitzgerald—

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do know Darren McCubbin!

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do know Darren Chester; you do not know Darren McCubbin. If he knew these individuals, he would not have ever put up that defence and that character assessment of Darren McCubbin. Darren McCubbin was not even a member of the Labor Party a few weeks ago. I know Darren McCubbin. Darren McCubbin is a decent guy who does thespians great—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is a decent guy, but he is not a patch on the former Labor candidate for Gippsland, who was Jane Rowe. Jane Rowe was one of the better Labor candidates I have ever experienced, and I have been around this place since 1990. She was decent, she was hard working, she was feisty, she was determined. And what did the Labor Party do to her? They ripped the ground out from under her in one foul stroke and they brought in someone of no consequence to the Labor Party whatsoever. Jane Rowe was an outstanding candidate for the Labor Party. She had put the work and the years and the effort in. And what did they turn around and do? They just dumped her.

Who did you upset when you did that? You upset a former agriculture minister in the Cain-Kirner government, Keith Hamilton, and his wife, Kath Hamilton, great Labor stalwarts of the Latrobe Valley. I know them well, and you have destroyed the grassroots of your own party by what you have done in thrusting this candidate onto Gippsland. This candidate is not a believable Labor candidate in this marginal seat. Have you decided you do not want a bar of this seat? I can tell you what you are doing and what you are not doing: you have taken $1 billion, as the Leader of the Nationals said, out of all of your programs that affect regional Victoria and Australia. Let us put that out of the way. We know what you have done; that is on the record. What we have done for Gippsland is put in the Pakenham Bypass—and thank heavens we got that completed before you got in because you would probably have taken the white lines off that too, if you could have. You would have refused to put the white lines on the Pakenham Bypass. That is how stingy you have become.

I know that there is no future for this Labor government in rural Australia, and that is why the member for Brand would have been part of this. As a former Secretary of the Australian Labor Party, he knows full well what seats he wants to win at the next election. He is not interested in rural Australia. Their inroads have gone as far as they can possibly go and they have made a decision: ‘Yeah, we’ll give the $2 million to Moe; yes, we’ll do the Traralgon sports ground that we said we’d do. But we’re doing it grudgingly; we don’t want to do it. We’ll just impose our candidate from head office in Melbourne and dump on Jane Rowe and her family completely. We don’t care if we upset the whole of the Labor Party across Gippsland; we just want to implement what we have said we will do.’ This is the Rudd proposal for rural Australia.

Why did you take money from the Traralgon Bypass? That is plainly ridiculous. It is not a sensible move—Traralgon needs it.

You have both talked about this election campaign. I wanted to talk about rural issues. Member for Brand, you were obviously very prepared in what you were about to do and responded in an exhortation on behalf of a candidate you have never met and do not know, who has never been in the party, has not got your history in the party and has not got the history of the other members who are sitting here and who deserve to be in this place. You are promoting someone who has no right to be in this place and, on Saturday, if we can do our best with Rohan Fitzgerald and Darren Chester, we will make sure he never gets into this place.

What you have not done is protect jobs in the coal industry. You have not even expressed a view that you might actually care about what is happening in the power industry down there. You have an alignment with Bob Brown. Bob Brown has an agenda about the Hazelwood power station. He wants a notch on his belt and he is going to use the Labor Party and the Rudd government to get that notch on his belt. He wants a trophy. He keeps saying, ‘Hazelwood power station: dirtiest power station in the world, if not the whole of the galaxy.’ Actually, it is quite an efficient power station that can be brought on line, raised up and then brought back. It is a very good power station that supplies 27 per cent of our power in Victoria and, therefore, pours into the national grid. It is a very important operation. There are 500 jobs swinging around that now. You may not work in the power industry in Gippsland, but there are many people that, if they do not work in it, know somebody who does work in the power industry. They will be treating their vote very carefully on Saturday, because they know that every Green vote is on its way to the Labor Party every time they slot one and that that is a cross against the power industry in Gippsland.

The Rudd government is not saying anything—it does not want to offend any Green voter. It is not actually a believer in clean coal. It is not a believer in all the effort that the previous government put into clean coal. It is not interested in the fact that there has been a great decline in the number of dairy farmers, as reported in the paper. It is not interested in the real issue of how to get doctors into rural Australia. There was not even a mention of that during the campaign. These are crucial issues for people who represent regional Australia—and, if you do not understand that, you do not understand anything about communities that need hospital services. In the Labor Party manifesto in Gippsland, there is not one mention anywhere of what the Rudd government is going to do about the hospitals, because it is running away from the issue of doctors in hospitals. The CSIRO, which used to be the great information gatherer for farmers and future farmers, has been starved of funds and it is selling off property and closing down its facilities.

The member for Brand was speaking today about a six-year-old audit report that showed that the process actually worked. The auditor had a look at it and said, ‘Here are the recommendations I am putting forward; you should be making some changes.’ Those changes were made by the former government, and there were processes implemented so that Regional Partnerships, which when you came into power was completely above board, went into many Labor seats. They were very good programs. Regional infrastructure is terribly important to what happens not only in Gippsland but right across the whole of Australia, and you have reduced the funds that are going to go into regional infrastructure. I will look forward to the program you may put in place next year. Regional arts have suffered under what you have done. You talked about Darren McCubbin. You have actually taken money off what your own candidate used to do. He was involved in arts in Gippsland up until a few weeks ago, and now you have removed money from the area where he was doing all the good work that the member for Brand just talked about a few minutes ago. It is unbelievable what the Labor Party do not know about their own program, their own candidate and what is going on in Gippsland. You are running on the Rudd line—‘Rudd will get us over the line here.’ You have not considered local people. You have not considered your own local branch members, let alone the local voters in the seat of Gippsland. Why haven’t the Labor Party recognised that the local people down there are going to make a local decision about whom they want to represent them here in Canberra? They will vote for a local person who has credibility in politics.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s Darren McCubbin!

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Darren McCubbin has no credibility in the political psyche of Gippsland—absolutely none—whereas both Rohan Fitzgerald and Darren Chester have a history of party activity, a history of representation and a history of local activity, particularly with regard to health care. They understand the issues of doctors and they understand the issues of hospitals, roads and infrastructure. I never go out of my way to offend a member on the other side, particularly the member for Brand. He has a history in the Labor Party, but he had to stand up there and shamefully defend a candidate he has never met and does not know and who has no future.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for McMillan has just suggested that Darren McCubbin has no right to be in this place. Those were his words. He said he had ‘no right to be in this place’. It is an outrageous slur on a well-known Gippsland community leader, who is the current Wellington Shire mayor and who has lived more than half his life in Sale, to suggest that he has no right to be in this place. I hope that comment of the member for McMillan is widely reported in Gippsland, because it is not members of the Liberal Party who decide who sits in this place; it is the people of the seat of Gippsland.

I am very pleased that the Leader of the Nationals has raised this matter today in the House. It is understandable that the Nationals would want to discuss the impact of government policies on regional communities, because the Nationals must have been pondering this topic a lot and wondering where they went so wrong. In every election over the last decade, the Nationals have watched their vote wilt away and their representation in this House disappear. Perhaps, if they had asked themselves 11 years ago how government policies impacted on regional communities, they would not be in the position they find themselves in today. Perhaps they would still hold Hume, Capricornia, New England or Kennedy. Or perhaps they would still hold Dawson, Page, Farrer or Richmond. And perhaps we would not be witnessing the incredible political shrinking act that is playing out before us. The National Party are like a spurned lover—unable to comprehend where they went wrong but refusing to give up. As the votes slip away, the Nationals keep going back for more, refusing to accept that they need to change their policies. After each rebuff the Nationals go back, like a spurned lover, thinking they can get away with not changing their ways and instead trying to buy their way back into the hearts of the Australian people and into the hearts of regional communities.

Once they got their hands on the Regional Partnerships program, it was like they had a charge account where they could buy everything they thought regional Australia wanted. Like a lover returning with flowers, chocolate and wine, the Nationals would go back again and again. But in their case they bought a cheese factory that did not work, a rail line that burnt down, an ethanol plant that did not exist and a grape seed oil factory that went bust. Just to remind members of the House, this was the same grape seed oil factory whose general manager was a state Liberal candidate.

We heard not one word from the Leader of the Nationals today about the three-volume National Audit Office report on the Regional Partnerships program published last year. That is because it concluded:

... the manner in which the Programme had been administered over the three year period to 30 June 2006 examined by ANAO had fallen short of an acceptable standard of public administration ...

Just to remind members of the House, the report showed that in a 51-minute spending spree before going into caretaker mode before the 2004 election the former National Party member for Dawson and parliamentary secretary approved 16 projects worth $3.3 million. But the report last year did not stop them. We have learned since that the former Liberal-National government approved 32 projects in the week before the 2007 election caretaker period, 28 of them in seats held by the Nationals and the Liberal Party. But the Leader of the Nationals still defends the Regional Partnerships program. He told ABC Broken Hill radio on 14 May:

Well, I don’t think there’s any examples of it being rorted.

He has not been looking very closely and he clearly has not read the National Audit Office report. He does not understand that looking after regional Australia does not mean regional rorts.

The Leader of the Nationals has said some extraordinary things about the Regional Partnerships program. On 8 May this year he told the same radio station, ABC Broken Hill:

This program was specifically designed to provide things in small communities ... The big cities have got the resources and can often provide on a commercial basis projects which are simply unviable in regional areas.

You would think, from listening to that, that Regional Partnerships was all about regional communities, but in fact—and the House has heard this before—$43 million from the Regional Partnerships program went in grants to capital cities. And, as mentioned already this afternoon by the member for Brand, over $5 million went to projects at Bondi Beach.

The Regional Partnerships program has been replaced. Labor has introduced the $176 million Better Regions program to fund projects identified by local communities as priority investments. There are a host of other commitments to communities in regional Australia, including the new Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, $74 million for a new regional development Australia network, $8 million for the Office of Northern Australia in Townsville and Darwin, $10 billion for rural and regional road and rail initiatives over five years and $1.9 billion for local governments across Australia. The Leader of the Nationals has provided us with a wonderful opportunity to talk about the benefits of some of this government’s policies for people around the country and particularly people in regional communities. We can talk about the many thousands—(Quorum formed) It is the sound policies of the Rudd Labor government and the neglect by the former government that the people of Gippsland will have in their minds when they go to vote this Saturday. The Leader of the Nationals, in raising this matter today, has provided the opportunity to talk about a whole range of present government policies. (Time expired)

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to draw the public’s attention to the real problems we have in rural and regional Australia. Policy failure is compounding the distress that is being caused right now by climate issues and by a whole range of social and economic circumstances that are beyond the control of individuals and communities. I do not think we have ever before seen rural and regional communities driven to place full-page notices in metropolitan daily newspapers—like the one I am holding up, placed today by a group in northern Victoria. They are talking about the north-south pipeline and they are begging for a reversal of a Labor government policy that is denying them the ability to continue to grow food for the nation. But the combination of failed state and federal Labor water policy is driving them to do just that—to spend more than $30,000 on notices. At a time of global food shortages, when drought is decimating the productive capacity of most of the Murray-Darling Basin and climate change is making most of Australia’s most productive farmland hotter and drier, the federal government appears hell-bent on allowing environmental and food production water to be diverted to cities such as Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. These cities have other water supply options such as recycling and stormwater reuse. It is just unconscionable that a north-south pipeline go ahead.

Decades ago, farmers in New South Wales and Victoria settled into a system to trade their water entitlements with each other to improve the efficiency and value of production from the use of that water. The market was orderly and transparent. The prices in that market are now completely distorted, as this government has dumped into it an initial $50 million and then another $2 billion or more to try to buy water for the environment. That is a failure of policy because the water licences they are buying are empty, as are the Hume Dam, the Dartmouth Dam and the dams on the Goulburn River. The farmers there will again have zero allocations at the opening of the next irrigation season. Buying water and distorting the market is destroying food production potential, it is destroying the viability of irrigation systems now and into the future and it does not deliver real water to the dying Murray River. It is failed policy and Labor knows better.

Why has this government turned its back on investment in on-farm water use efficiency? The coalition had over $2 billion on the table. That would have produced real water for the environment, real adaptation to climate change and real increases in on-farm productivity. Farmers could have been helped to produce twice as much with half the water. That policy has been shelved. Instead we have had this nonsense of the buyback of water from drought-stressed, lender-pushed farmers. It is failed policy which is going to have enormous intergenerational impacts. Rural Australia was deeply concerned at the possibility of a change of government last November. They knew that Labor would bury them, but they were not sure whether it would be through ignorance, inexperience, a desire to punish or a totally city-centric bias. It would seem that the policy failures and removal of adequate resources are a combination of all of these factors.

I want you to consider Gippsland. Gippsland is a typical hardworking, hands-on rural community that produces more than the average effort in energy production. Its crime seems to be that it has been well represented by the coalition for generations. It should be, and probably will be, for the future. But, right now, its key government services and volunteer effort are being destroyed by Rudd government cuts, pre-budget cuts and policy failures. Let us begin with what Labor has done to kill off the capacity of the locals to sustain their environment and overcome the ravages of fire, then flood and now drought. Landcare has been cut by 20 per cent, the Maffra and District Landcare group is in despair, the local West Gippsland and East Gippsland catchment management authorities have been slashed by 40 per cent, the Envirofund has gone, the biodiversity hot spot funding has gone, the natural resource management officers are gone, the community water grants are gone, strategic roads funding has gone and the Regional Partnerships money has gone for now. Also, the Bureau of Meteorology has been cut back, so they will not know when the next flood is bearing down on them.

Gippsland has some of the most efficient food production in Australia but, like the rest of the country, it too will suffer from CSIRO slashing its on-the-ground research stations—shutting them down because Rudd says they must. If that is not enough, the schools infrastructure grants have gone, and many country schools long neglected by Labor state governments will now not be able to take advantage of their first chance in decades to fix toilets, heating, cooling, shadecloth, playground equipment, interactive whiteboards and computers. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this matter of public importance debate because, in the short period that this government has been in office, I think we have a really positive record in my electorate of Wakefield, in South Australia and across the country. But I must admit that the question is so broad I did not expect to see such a focus from the opposition on Gippsland. We heard the member for McMillan go through a soap opera of characters. From what I read about Darren McCubbin, I understand he has lived in the area for the whole of his life and he might represent the area well, unlike his predecessor, who presided over the equine influenza disaster. (Quorum formed) I am glad I have a crowd, if only for a short period.

One thing that has not been mentioned in this debate is the issue of computers in schools. In my own electorate, the high school in the town of Clare, which is one of the regional towns in my electorate—it has great wine—will receive 110 computers and Riverton High School, which is just down the road, will receive 73 computers. I do not know very much about Gippsland and I do not know very much about Darren McCubbin, but I can tell you this: in this place here is a vote for computers in schools—not just in Gippsland, not just in Wakefield but across the country, and that counts for a lot.

It used to be said that the National Party tail wagged the Liberal Party dog. That was code for saying that the country did better out of a coalition than it should. But with the previous government, if it was a dog it was a doberman, a vicious dog with a very small tail, because we know that over the decade the regions did not do so well. There was underfunding of roads; there was an annual reduction of $244 million a year over that period.

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would have been a miniature doberman.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would have nipped at your ankles. Regional communities were the first to suffer from that cruel hoax with the road funding. Many people in my electorate, many local mayors, have told me that they are very happy that road funding in South Australia has received a supplementary payment. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.