Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) congratulates the Government on the success of the National Stronger Regions Fund (NSRF);

(2) acknowledges the significant and positive impact that the NSRF is having in rural, remote and disadvantaged regions around Australia; and

(3) notes that the:

(a) Government is investing $205,622,942 in 70 projects around New South Wales under 3 rounds of the NSRF; and

(b) NSRF is delivering infrastructure projects to create jobs in regional areas, improve community facilities and support stronger and more sustainable communities across NSW.

The Australian government is committed to building stronger regions. After all, regional Australia allows our cities to exist. Regional Australia supplies our water, our food and, indeed, our natural resources. Additionally, regional Australia has a vital role to play in driving economic development, lifting productivity and fostering innovation. To strengthen communities in our regions and to drive new growth there, the coalition government established the National Stronger Regions Fund as part of its 2013 election commitments for regional Australia. Over three rounds of the National Stronger Regions Fund, over $632 million was invested nationally into 229 projects. A total of $205,622,942 was invested into 70 projects across New South Wales.

At the recent federal election, the coalition government refocused the National Stronger Regions Fund to be available only to regional, rural and remote Australia and broadened it to include small community groups. This is a development which has been extremely warmly received out in country New South Wales and Australia. The majority of the $297 million is expected to go to infrastructure. However, the new fund will, for the first time, provide an opportunity for those smaller groups and volunteer organisations to access the funding where they cannot contribute matching dollars themselves, which is often the case with small, country community groups.

As a regional MP—a country MP—I have seen firsthand the enormous benefit these programs bring to our rural communities. I would like to mention some of the projects in the Calare electorate that have received funding over three rounds under the National Stronger Regions Fund. Firstly, $747,000 was provided for the redevelopment of the CareWest Community Connection Centre in Orange. This new facility was officially opened on Monday, 12 December 2016—and what a day it was. This centre provides people with a disability, older people, youth and those seeking social inclusion with a modern, regional hub for connecting them to the community. It includes access to recreational, health and wellbeing facilities and services. It will cater for up to 1,000 people every year. During construction, the project created 83 jobs, and another seven ongoing jobs were also created.

I would like to pay tribute to the vision of Lesa Dunn, who was formerly the community engagement manager at CareWest and one of the key driving forces behind this project; George Blackwell, who is the president of the CareWest board; and Tim Curran, who has been the chief executive officer of CareWest for a decade and provided wonderful leadership. I would also like to mention Sim Madigan, who is the marketing and public relations officer, and the community engagement coordinator, Alicia Price, who took over from Lesa Dunn and saw the project through to its completion.

In addition to that project, Lithgow received over $1.3 million to revitalise its main street and create a vibrant public domain within its central business district. That, again, was a project very warmly received. It certainly encouraged Lithgow Council to move that project along, because everyone is very excited about it.

Bathurst Regional council received $2.5 million for the upgrade of Bathurst Airport. I was out there recently with the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Darren Chester, and we inspected the airport. Again, the community is very excited. It is going to make a real difference when big events such as the Bathurst 1000 is on. At the moment there is a limit on how many planes can land there for events like that simply because they do not have the capacity on the tarmac and the aprons to cater for them.

Bathurst Regional Council also received $965,000 for the construction of a rail museum at the Railway Institute site on Havannah Street. Again, this is a project with huge community support. It has been widely welcomed, particularly by people like John Hollis, who is the chair of Rail Action Bathurst and was instrumental in getting the Bathurst Bullet connected to the railway that goes to Sydney. It was very warmly received.

In addition, Lithgow has received $545,000 for the upgrade of its iconic Blast Furnace Park. We had Senator Fiona Nash out there late last year to make that formal announcement. It is going to help revitalise that section of Lithgow and be a true community asset.

Those are just a few examples I have given today which demonstrate the value of this funding program. I commend the motion to this chamber.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for this motion?

Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I echo the honourable member's motion that the National Stronger Regions Fund was indeed successful for New South Wales. However, in areas of Australia it did not reach the lofty heights that it did for the honourable member's home state, or indeed the honourable member's electorate. The National Stronger Regions Fund invested $632 million into 229 projects. Yet in my home state of South Australia there were only 18 approved projects over the three rounds of funding, with a total investment figure of just over $56 million.

Unfortunately, there were no projects deemed worthy of federal funding in my electorate of Mayo, which has two of the fastest-growing regional areas in Australia. Despite this surprising anomaly, I do support a government initiative that seeks to assist in the strengthening of our regional areas. It is vitally important to continue to invest in regional Australia. Too often, our regional centres have been left to fend for themselves whilst major metropolitan areas secure buckets of money.

I was initially excited when it was announced that there was going to be a new funding pool for regional infrastructure known as the Building Better Regions Fund, but imagine my dismay when I examined the funding guidelines to find out that much of my electorate, including the regional centres of Mount Barker and most of the Adelaide Hills, has been excluded from being able to access these funds. Mount Barker sits roughly 40 kilometres from the Adelaide CBD on the eastern side of the Adelaide Hills. The region's population is currently estimated at 30,000 and it is predicted to rise to 50,000 within 20 years. It is exactly the kind of area that would benefit most from this funding pool. Whether it had been an upgrade for a major road or the building of a community hub, these are things that we desperately need in our community.

It has been raised with me that Mount Barker and the Adelaide Hills are not situated far enough away from Adelaide to be considered regional. To those people I say: you must never have visited my area. There are several factors that make our region a true regional centre distinct from the Adelaide metropolitan area. We have a lack of transport, we have long, windy roads and the topography and geography make us far, far away. What makes this decision by the federal government even harder for me to understand is the fact that the following population centres have been deemed eligible to receive funding under this new scheme: the Gold Coast, with a population of over half a million; Newcastle, with over 310,000 people; the Sunshine Coast, with a population of just under 300,000; and Geelong, less than an hour away from Melbourne and with nearly 200,000 people. And yet Mount Barker, with its modest regional population of just 30,000 has been deemed ineligible. Townships of 1,000 are not included. In my opinion, this is inconceivable. I would like to hear what the argument is in favour of including the Gold Coast, which is the sixth-biggest city in Australia and a mere 70 kilometres from the third-biggest city in Australia.

In a state such as South Australia, where manufacturing is closing down and our unemployment is rising, the federal government has not seen fit to invest in a region that is ready to boom. Food producing and agriculture in the Adelaide Hills are crying out for national building infrastructure projects to allow them to display their talents to the world. The best way to attract investment is to build better regions, not throw money at major urban centres like the Gold Coast.

I recently met with the National Growth Areas Alliance, a coalition of local government councils from outer urban and inner regional areas in Australia, and they have put forward a policy plan for long-term government investment in the outer suburbs of our major cities. This is a dedicated infrastructure fund to replace the ad hoc nature of grant funding. They say that we are about $50 billion behind in investment in these areas. I fully support this idea. These areas are home to families with small children, retirees and migrants, and they are constantly ignored in favour of metropolitan infrastructure projects.

And so, while the honourable member is correct in saying that the National Stronger Regions Fund was successful in helping strengthen many regional areas around Australia—especially in New South Wales—I say that work is not yet finished. Every state and territory must receive investment in it to make sure that Australia grows well into our future. I will continue to fight for the regional areas in my state that have been incomprehensibly excluded from this new fund.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague the member for Calare for providing this opportunity to speak on one of our government's great success stories: the National Stronger Regions Fund. I certainly acknowledge the significant and positive impact that the fund is having on regional areas of Australia like my electorate of Capricornia. I take this opportunity to update the House on several significant projects that the coalition has invested in in Capricornia.

Just prior to Christmas, the first sod was turned to launch construction of a new Capricorn Helicopter Rescue Service hangar in Rockhampton. About 50 per cent of this $4.8 million project is being funded by the coalition government's National Stronger Regions Fund. This amounts to $2.34 million.

Meanwhile, in the Mackay part of my electorate the National Stronger Regions Fund has contributed $10 million towards stages 1 and 2 of the Mackay regional sports precinct at CQ University campus at Ooralea. Overall, this entire project is worth about $85 million. Stages 1 and 2 are worth about $20 million in total and are expected to provide 104 jobs during construction and another 33 new jobs once the facility is built.

In other areas, the summer break saw the soft launch of the multimillion-dollar Yeppoon town centre car park. The multistorey facility is a key stage of supporting infrastructure to be built in the Yeppoon foreshore and town centre revitalisation project. I am pleased that the federal coalition government committed $10 million towards this revitalisation plan under our NSRF. The car park will eventually take vehicles off the main beachfront and allow that area to be used for other activities to attract more visitors and business opportunities. The anticipated increased visitor numbers are expected to inject up to $6 million a year into the local economy.

Meanwhile, I was recently also fortunate to attend the official opening of stage 1 of the Rockhampton riverbank revitalisation. I am pleased our federal government was able to contribute $7 million to the project under our National Stronger Regions Fund. This development provides an opportunity for increased economic activity along the river and historic Quay Street which will help to create future jobs in Rockhampton city.

Today I also want to touch on an offshoot of the National Stronger Regions Fund titled the National Stronger Communities Fund. The following are some of the key community projects that have received funding. There is $20,000 for a new Barmoya bushfire shed, $8,835 to St John Ambulance Rockhampton for new emergency equipment, $7,500 for a new food trailer for the Rockhampton Mt Archer Lions Club, $20,000 for new toilets at Twin Hills Race Club, $11,454 for Clermont Kindergarten Day Care Centre to construct nature inspired play areas, $10,000 for a dentist's chair at Nebo rural health clinic and $7,600 for the Wongabeena Aged Housing Sarina facility to install a cement path and ramps for safer mobility. There is $20,000 for Rockhampton Mountain Bike Club stage II bush track around Mount Archer; $5,000 for Yeppoon Surf Life Saving Club to acquire new water rescue dummies and training gear; $5,942 for Rockhampton Heritage Village to build a boardwalk viewing area; $10,317 to the Blair Athol recreation hall; $6,624 to the Clermont Rugby League club towards an electronic scoreboard at Clermont sports ground; $20,000 to the Pioneer Valley Golf Club for secure storage for golf buggies; $20,000 to Lions Club of Emu Park for the expansion of its clubhouse; $20,000 to Yeppoon Surf Life Saving Club for a fit-out of an education and training facility; $6,562 to Emu Park Surf Life Saving Club for training equipment; $17,395 to Emu Park sports and recreation association for the multipurpose building at Bicentennial Oval; $20,000 to Clermont Kindergarten Day Care Centre for a new phase 2 toddler playground; and $8,250 to the local outriggers at Yeppoon for a waterproof GPS location tracking device.

These are all examples of how our coalition government is helping communities in regional Capricornia.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always delighted to welcome programs which are aimed at delivering more funding to regional Australia. As a representative from the regional area of Whitlam, I know how important it is to get federal funds supplementing local and state funds for new infrastructure projects into regions like ours.

I was very pleased to welcome $10 million worth of funding for the Fowlers Road to Fairwater Drive road link, a project in my electorate. This was evidence based policy at its very best—a four-lane, 1.3-kilometre road link that will enable the construction of over 1,300 new dwellings and ease the pressure on local roads. With housing affordability being the crisis that it is, infrastructure that supports new housing and new housing developments is absolutely critical. Investing in the right projects will now support economic growth and jobs in the long term. I was very interested and concerned to hear the member for Mayo say that her region attracted no funding. Perhaps, if the government had not been funding projects in inner-city Kooyong out of this regional investment program, they might have been able to fund some projects in the member for Mayo's electorate.

Be that as it may, ever since the 2014 budget the coalition has claimed it is delivering $50 billion in infrastructure investment, but it is not. The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development has revealed the current investment program is worth just under $34 billion over five years, with another $8 billion proposed to be invested onwards in the unspecified future. In contrast, Labor has always had a strong commitment to funding nation-building programs. I think the House needs to remember that when we came into office in 2007 we were ranked No. 20—that is right, Deputy Speaker; you heard me right—in the OECD for infrastructure investment. When we left office we were No. 1—top of the podium, gold medal—when it came to investing in infrastructure. Labor's $60 billion Nation Building program covering roads, rail and ports cleared a hell of a lot of the bottlenecks that the Howard government left it with and ensured that we would continue to export and continue to grow our economy during the global financial crisis, when all of those other economies were going backwards. Almost two-thirds of the investment went into regional Australia, which is something we are very proud of.

Since the coalition came back to government, most of this good work has been undone. There has been a cut to infrastructure spending of 30 per cent. The coalition have frozen financial assistance grants indexation, taking about a billion dollars. They are slapping themselves on the back for the roads building program that they fund local councils for, but they have ripped exactly the same amount of money out of the financial assistance grants. That is called a Peter and Paul operation, where they pull money out of one of your pockets and put it in the other and ask for a lot of thanks for the pleasure.

I want to talk about inequality, because on the one hand you see National Party MPs running around the country pushing each other aside to cut the ribbon on small infrastructure projects in the electorate, but the real story is inequality.

Inequality is growing. It is growing across the economy, but nowhere is it growing more than in regional Australia, where the gap between what is happening in the city and what is happening in the country is growing and growing. So we see National Party MPs and regional Liberal MPs roar like lions in their electorates about how they are going to go down to Canberra and stand up to those people in government—that would be them—and ensure that their electorate gets a fair deal. Meanwhile, they come down here and they are like lambs in the party room. They file into parliament and stick their hands up and vote for every one of the member for Warringah's and every one of the Prime Minister's budget cuts. When it comes to people and the impact it has on the electorate I am talking about the cuts to health and hospital funding and the cuts to education funding. In the area of skills development—now this is a real crime—$1 billion was taken out of traineeship and apprenticeship systems at the same time as they were saying, 'We have to do something to get our kids a job.'

So here is a message to those regional MPs: it is all very good to stand here in parliament and give a great tub-thumping speech about the work that they are doing back in their electorate to attract funding, but while they are down here in Canberra how about they stand up in the caucus room and the parliament for the interests of the people who they represent? Some of them are the poorest people in Australia and they need better representation.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am quite surprised that I am speaking after my colleague because this is a government motion about the National Stronger Regions Fund. A government and a party—the National Party and the Liberal Party—that claim to represent the regions, yet they cannot fill their own speaking list. What a joke! They cannot fill their own speaking list to speak about their own government program. How can they really care about the bush? It just demonstrates in volume that they cannot stand up here and defend their own funding program.

As my colleague has said, they are not the first to have a Stronger Regions Fund: we had one, when Labor was last in government—the RDAF fund. A lot of people are saying to me in the community that there was a fairer distribution of funding and resources. The projects that were being put forward had been through a process. They were prioritised by local government and local communities, they were prioritised by the state and then they were prioritised by the Regional Development Australia bodies and organisation.

In my part of the world, I have to confess that we are doing quite well at the process. We have received lots of projects. They have been through the vetting process and they have been funded—like the Ulumbarra Theatre, which received $12 million of federal Labor government money to help build a build a 1,000-seat theatre. There was the Elmore Field Days, which received $500,000 to build stables for their events. There was Hanging Rock, where just this weekend we saw the success of that funding, with Bruce Springsteen playing at Hanging Rock. It received $2 million to help power the site and build picnic infrastructure.

There is the Bendigo Tennis Centre, which is a story we cannot forget. It was funded by Labor. Funding was announced in round 5A and then this government was elected and Warren Truss, who was the minister at the time, scrapped it. He said, 'It is not a priority. That was a Labor election commitment and we're not funding it.' Even though funding was allocated, this government cut it on coming to office. The community did not give up and they kept fighting for it. We committed to it again at the last election and then—lo and behold!—it was successful in the last round of stronger regions! It did come as a surprise, because we knew the Liberals and the Nationals did not support the project and they had not prioritised it in the lead-up to last election. But, do you know why it was successful, Deputy Speaker? Because the local government, the City of Greater Bendigo, are very good at paperwork. They nailed the brief and when the department put forward its priority lists it must have been near the top.

This is my point: the way the government has structured the current fund, it favours well-resourced local government areas. It favours cities that have strong economic development units that can nail the brief the government puts forward. It means that our smaller councils struggle; they struggle to compete because it is a competitive tender process. Councils in my area, like Mount Alexander, Loddon Shire and the Macedon Ranges have always struggled against big regional cities when it comes to completing this paperwork. We have received $5 million funding for the Bendigo Airport and $5 million for the Bendigo Aquatics Centre. These projects have been bipartisan. There is also money that will be delivered for the Bendigo RSL redevelopment project. But, I say it again and stress that communities should not have to fight so hard to receive funding.

I also want to point out the fact that, every time a group or an organisation asks for funding, the default position of every minister the moment they realise you are in a regional area is: 'Apply to the National Stronger Regions Fund.' It does not matter whether you are in health care or you are in women's sport or you are a community group or organisation. The default is: 'We're not going to help you. Go and apply for this fund.' This government pretends that this fund can be everything to everyone.

Take the situation of women's AFL in Victoria. It is brilliant. Women are engaging in AFL. They are playing sport, yet we do not have the facilities for them in their sporting clubs. Their sporting clubs want to have female-friendly facilities, but they just do not have the resources right now, and they say it could take 25 years of sausage sizzles to get the dollars. This is an opportunity for the federal government to get on board and embrace what is happening right now in women's sport. Instead, the only response that I have got from the Minister for Sport is: 'Go and apply to this fund that everybody else is applying to'—that is, compete against airports, compete against child-care centres and compete against roads projects. It is not good enough.

It is again very disappointing that, on their own motion, the government cannot even fill the speaking list. It speaks volumes to how much they really do care about the bush and really do care about standing up for regional Australia.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.