Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to bring to the House meetings I have been having across my electorate recently about daring to dream and the future of regional Australia. We have a challenge in this country. We can make the choice between building more congestion across our cities on the edges or having a real jobs vision and a plan for our inland cities. We have a great quality of life in our inland cities. You can go for a swim in the Murray River in my electorate and you will not get eaten by a shark or a crocodile. We have some great affordable housing. A four-bedroom house will cost you $350,000 and you will get a pizza oven and a pool out the back.

We want people to live in regional Australia. We want people to put their roots down, get educated there, have their children there and work there. We need to grow regional Australia. In our strategy we have been talking about two things. The first is building the capacity of people. If we can get one small business to put on one extra person or one extra apprentice, that is one more job that builds capacity. The other thing we have been talking about is getting people together. You only build communities when you interconnect people. We need to get people out of their house, playing some sport and going to community events. If we can do those two things—build capacity and build communities—regional Australia will continue to be the powerhouse of Australia.