Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government recently published Informing Regional Investment: State of Australia's Regions 2024 which provides evidence and insights on contemporary topics of interest across Australia's diverse regions;

(2) considers the 2024 report focuses on contemporary and pressing issues as identified at the local level, including:

(a) ensuring regional workforces are positioned to meet the needs of today and tomorrow;

(b) promoting the economic aspirations, cultures and languages of First Nations people;

(c) supporting places with amenity, services and economic opportunities;

(d) collaboratively addressing issues like housing availability and affordability and access to quality early childhood education and care;

(e) preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters; and

(f) responding to challenges and opportunities as we transition to a net zero emissions future; and

(3) commends the current Government for their ongoing commitment to advance the lives of regional Australia.

I'm really honoured to move this private member's motion today on the state of Australia's regions, because where I live, on the New South Wales South Coast, we know how important regional Australia is. Our regions are the backbone of our nation. I want to thank the member for Hunter in advance for seconding this motion, because he knows how important regional Australia is, and I thank all speakers who will speak on this motion.

Of course, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories know how important our regions are. That's why the Australian government recently launched a new report to inform how we can together best develop sustainable regions. The State of Australia's regions 2024 report plays an important part in supporting our regions to respond to challenges and harness opportunities. We know that more and more people are moving to our regions, and we must take advantage of the shifts underway to benefit our regions as they grow. The report takes a look at key issues and opportunities, and I want to go through some of these now. First of all, ensuring our regional workforces are positioned to meet the needs of today and tomorrow is why, when we came to government, we put a focus on jobs and skills. We held a jobs summit and we have put people at the forefront of regional growth with the employment white paper; fee-free TAFE, which is bringing more local tradies to TAFE and apprenticeships; regional university hubs—and I want to send a shout out to our very own Country Universities Centre at Ulladulla; and a new migration strategy. And of course our tax cuts, to be delivered from 1 July, will overwhelmingly support regional Australians, with 87 per cent of people in my electorate of Gilmore set to receive a bigger tax cut.

Targeted investments in regional infrastructure are vital. That's why I'm ecstatic we recently marked the start of major construction on the Jervis Bay flyover, with $100 million in federal funding by the Albanese Labor government. There's $752 million in federal funding for the Milton Ulladulla bypass and $97 million for the Nowra bypass. We're investing in better regional services. Our federal Medicare Urgent Care Clinic at Batemans Bay is open and in its first two months saw 1,900 patients, all bulk billed. Our headspace at Kiama is making pleasing progress. We've tripled the Medicare bulk-billing incentives for seniors, concession card holders and students, and, pleasingly, we've already seen bulk-billing rates increase by 4.3 per cent on the South Coast. We've made medicines cheaper, and in Gilmore that's already saved people $1.3 million in medicine costs. We've made child care cheaper, benefiting around 4,800 families in Gilmore.

My electorate has been pummelled by natural disasters, but we're getting on with improving assistance in disasters. We announced the natural disaster Infrastructure Betterment Fund, which sees additional federal funding to assist our local councils, and I'm pleased road such as Jamberoo Mountain Road, Wallaby Hill Road, Illaroo Road and North Head Drive at Moruya have all benefited. Just a few weeks ago I helped to officially open the upgraded Artie Smith Oval, another Bushfire Local Economic Recovery project with federal funding. The composite bushfire-proof power poles at South Durras are now up and working—another election commitment delivered. The list goes on: the Bawley Point microgrid, which is another great project, has been switched on and helps protect the electricity supply to Bawley Point.

Just last week, I was proud to stand with the member for South Coast and the New South Wales minister for planning when an increase to the South Coast Build-to-Rent project was announced. We have comprehensive plans in place to increase affordable and social housing supply through our National Housing Accord, and our Housing Australia Future Fund is open for expressions of interest.

My region, like all regions, has challenges. How we respond and start to tackle these challenges to set us up for the future is what I am passionate about. That's why I welcome the Informing Regional Investment: State of Australia's Regions 2024, which helps provide a framework for the better policies we're implementing to help our regions—in my region and right across Australia.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regional Australia is the driving force of our economy, but the regions are so much more than their economic contribution alone. They are places to raise a family and they're places to experience the best of tight knit communities. But regional Australia faces its share of challenges too, which the recent state of the nation report makes all too clear. This report is part of the Regional Investment Framework announced in last year's budget as the government's approach to delivering regional investment. It sets out priority areas for investment implementation, but even before I turned to page 1 I could have said what those priority areas are. People across my electorate constantly tell me that in areas like housing, health care, education and child care, regional Australians are not getting a fair go and it's holding us back.

This is the government's flagship report on the regions, but all it does is outline national policies and add 'including regional Australia'. Now that is not good enough. Regional Australia should not be an afterthought to policy designed for the cities. Regional communities know what the problems are and we know the solutions too.

We need a vision for how government will take advantage of the strengths and the highlights of our regions. This starts with targeted policies that address the unique challenges in regional, rural and remote communities—policies that are place based. For example, in my electorate of Indi, the housing crisis is all too real. I know that for families in my electorate, it's never been harder to find a home.

At the National Regional Housing Summit earlier this month, the regions spoke with a unified voice and supported my calls for a dedicated regional housing infrastructure fund. Unfortunately, this government has announced no targeted housing solutions for regional Australia. It has rejected my amendments to dedicate 30 per cent of housing funding to the regions and is silent on my proposal for a regional housing infrastructure fund. But regional Australia desperately needs this funding. Without addressing housing supply, we can't house our current population, let alone the essential workers that we need. We need more nurses, more early-childhood educators, more teachers, more electricians, more engineers and more planners in the regions.

In the next decade alone, Australia will need more than 210,000 new workers to drive the energy transition. And guess what? These jobs will disproportionately be in rural and regional Australia. The economic opportunities from this are enormous, if we harness them. But we must include ways to share these profits to ensure that a fair share of the benefits from this renewable energy transformation actually goes to the communities hosting the solar, the wind and the transmission infrastructure that are driving the energy transition. This starts with making the necessary investments in affordable and accessible education and training.

Like many of the policy challenges we face in regional Australia, the energy transition also represents great opportunity. But this report gave me no sense that the government understands how to respond to our challenges or our opportunities. On that note, both the State of Australia's Regions report and the recently released University Accord review recommend expanding the Regional University Study Hubs program. I'm pleased to see this—and there's much else in the University Accord review document that I am happy about.

In my electorate, hubs in Wangaratta, Mansfield and Corryong are helping to close the education gap, and I am supporting the push for additional hubs in Murrindindi and Benalla. By making it easier for young Australians to take up apprenticeships and study at regional universities and TAFEs, we can ensure regional communities actively shape their future and are not shaped by it.

There's another piece to this complex puzzle: a commitment to fix the lack of available and affordable child care in regional communities. In towns across my electorate, there are more children than childcare places, creating lengthy waitlists. I want the government to listen to the Productivity Commission and the ACCC and invest properly in regional child care.

So, while I commend the government for publishing the State of Australia's Regions report, there is so much more work to be done. As a proud regional Independent, I won't stop pushing this government to make the investments that unlock regional potential. But we need a clear and targeted plan—not just a report, but a plan. We need a demonstration of government leadership that will set the regions up for a prosperous future, for now and well into the future. Let's harness the strengths of regional Australia; let's get on with the job; let's target policies towards regional, rural and remote Australia.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion by my good friend the member for Gilmore. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government recently released the informative State of Australia's regions 2024 report, which is a crucial step forward towards understanding and addressing the needs of our regional communities. The report offers insights into how we can best develop sustainable regions and capitalise on opportunities while addressing challenges.

First and foremost, it is imperative to acknowledge the pivotal role our regions play in the prosperity of our nation. As we navigate economic shifts, it is essential to support our regions in leveraging these challenges for their benefit.

The report examines critical issues and opportunities facing regions, pinpointed at the grassroots level through the Regional Development Australia network. It also uses data and insight from trusted sources like the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Regional Data Hub and the Regional Australia Institute.

The report also shows that our government is committed to taking charge of regional policies again. We aim to coordinate and target our investments across different parts of the government more effectively. This is made possible through the Regional Investment Framework announced in the last budget. The report also recognises the significant contribution that regional Australia makes to our nation, while highlighting some of the pressures and opportunities arising in the regions as our world continues to change. It is vital that governments, industries and communities have the information required to navigate these challenges and to support evidence based planning, prioritisation and investment.

The report also tells us what we as a government have been doing to tackle these challenges. In our last two budgets we have introduced over 350 plans and measures to help regional communities. These include: programs that focus on helping people in regional areas to get better jobs, like the employment white paper, and providing hundreds of thousands of fee-free TAFE positions; our tax cuts, to be delivered from 1 July, will overwhelmingly support regional Australians; investing billions of dollars into building things like roads and bridges in regional areas; making homes more affordable; getting ready for and recovering from disasters like the floods that ripped through the Hunter in 2022; and providing services such as health care and child care in regional and rural parts of Australia through increases to bulk-billing and rolling out Medicare Urgent Care Clinics like the one in my electorate in the Hunter. We're also about to have a Head to Health mental health clinic open its doors very shortly in Muswellbrook. We're supporting regional businesses and industries by setting up programs like the Powering the Regions Fund, our $15 billion investment in the National Reconstruction Fund, the Critical Mineral Strategy and the THRIVE 2030 tourism strategy. All these things are being rolled out by a Labor government.

But 'compare the pair': when we came to government we inherited a bucket of rorts and some of the most incompetent administration of grants funding ever seen. There were things like the Building Better Regions Fund and the Community Development Grants. And who could forget the sports rorts? The list goes on and on. Let's just have a look at the Community Development Grants program rort. More than 120 projects weren't contracted by the previous government. Nine of the projects dated back to 2016 and six of the projects had no proponent at all. This was just business as usual from those opposite, but we're restoring integrity to these regional grants programs. We're providing certainty and fairness to regional communities and we'll invest $1 billion over the next three years in our new regional grants program. These will improve liveability in our regional towns and cities, in partnership with local government and the community.

We also know that success lies in listening to our communities and local voices that know their region best. The last couple of years have seen significant population growth across all regions, including the Hunter. Many regions are finding it difficult to meet local workforce demands, with job advertisements doubling between 2019 and 2023. The continued growth of freight transported on our regional roads is a good example of why targeted investment in infrastructure is needed for growth and liveability. We're listening to regional Australia because we have great local members who are helping to shape policy. (Time expired)

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a proud regional member of the federal parliament representing regional Queenslanders—the Sunshine Coast; the beautiful, the magnificent Sunshine Coast! I'm very proud because I represent amazing people and amazing businesses in a magnificent part of the world. But we all remember that Telstra ad, where the woman sticks her head out the window when she realises that her secretary hasn't paid for the Yellow Pages and she says, 'Not happy, Jan.' Well, I'm not happy today and I will tell you why, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie: two years ago the federal member for Fairfax and I stood up and announced that we had secured $1.6 billion for heavy passenger rail to come into the Sunshine Coast. For two years we tried to kick and drag the state Labor government into action to match the former coalition's government $1.6 billion commitment to rail into the Sunshine Coast. For two years the state Labor government did absolutely nothing. They sat on their hands. For two years they dithered, they delayed and they made up every excuse under the sun as to why this could not be done. And low and behold, yesterday morning the new Labor Premier stood up and said, 'Do you know what? We are going to do this but we will not do it all.' So because this state Labor government delayed for two years, we have seen costs blow out from an estimated cost of $3.2 billion to somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion But here is the rub: it is only for one-third of the job. This state Labor government now wants to build rail into one of the fastest-growing regions in our country where we are going to be hosting the Olympics and the Paralympic games in 2032 and it is only going to take the rail from Beerwah to Caloundra, not Beerwah-Caloundra-Kiwana-Maroochydore. So we are getting one-third of the rail for more than twice the price. The state Labor government should hang their heads in shame.

There is also a degree of culpability from this federal government as well because, when this federal government came into power, they, of course, announced their now infamous 90-day review, which dragged all infrastructure projects out almost for eternity. This 90-day review was more like a 12-month or 18-month review. When the Labor federal government finally made an announcement, it was that they are setting aside the $1.6 billion that the former coalition government had committed to. Of course, you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, that, as a lawyer, when you set something aside, you are rejecting it. They are setting it aside. What does that mean? Does that mean they are putting it aside and reserving it or that they are rejecting it? We cannot get straight answers out of the federal infrastructure minister as to what they are going to be doing with their planned $1.6 billion that the former coalition government committed to. We also had to drag this Labor government kicking and screaming to keep that funding.

In the last few moments that I have, those members opposite talk the big talk about housing. But in this 90-day review this federal government scrapped $160 million from the Mooloolah River Interchange. More than 100 families were evicted from their homes to build the Mooloolah River Interchange. More than 100 homes were demolished to build this interchange. Now $160 million has been ripped out of it by this callous federal government and the project may not even go ahead at all. How is that fair? Those members opposite talk the big talk about infrastructure and housing but they just do not care.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last thing we will be doing is taking lectures from those opposite about housing. I mean, here is the Albanese Labor government putting $10 billion into the Housing Australia Future Fund. We have a bill before the House for Help to Buy to get 40,000 low-income, middle-income and young Australians into their own homes. We have the biggest Commonwealth rent assistance increase for 30 years, so we are not going to be taking lectures from those opposite about the state of the housing market in Australia after 10 years of neglect and utter failure. I have been very proud to represent regional Tasmania in this place for almost eight years; three-quarters of that, unfortunately, under a coalition government. Here's hoping for many more years of Labor government so we can get that percentage up under a Labor government.

I have heard the cries for help from our regional communities for more support over years of Liberal governments. I was very proud to be able to hold the Liberal government to account and to also play a part in seeing the real change that the Albanese Labor government is making in Australia's regions in just 21 months. It would be remiss of me to talk about holding the former government to account without mentioning robodebt and the terrible impact that that disgraceful, illegal program had on people in the regions. The people opposite were in government for 10 years and did nothing about robodebt and the damage it inflicted on so many Australians, and on so many regional Australians.

One of my first speeches in this place was during an MPI—a matter of public importance—on the topic of rural and regional Australia, where I spoke on declining levels of regional health care, outdated telecommunications and the cost-of-living concerns. That is the legacy of 10 years of failed Liberal government. The Labor Party came into power inheriting not only those problems but also the grants rorts and the poor administration of regional grants funding. We're cleaning the mess up. In the Building Better Regions Fund, for example, there were more than 120 projects uncontracted by the previous government. Nine dated back to 2016. There were more than $18 million worth of projects with no locations. Of course grants under the Building Better Regions Fund favoured National Party electorates and were not based on merit. Neither were there any rules. The only rule was: was it a marginal seat or a seat that the Liberals and Nationals could win votes out of? A dartboard or a chocolate wheel would have brought fairer outcomes for Australia's regions.

It's time to restore integrity and fairness to regional funding, and that's what the Labor government is doing. I welcome our recently launched report, State of Australia's Regions 2024, which willinform regional development. I thank the member for Gilmore for bringing on this motion. The report takes a look at key issues, identifies opportunities for our regions and recognises how regional Australia significantly contributes to the nation. We have heard what matters to our regions, like addressing healthcare challenges. There are many. We acknowledge them, and we are getting on the job of addressing them and fixing them.

We're already making our mark in this area in my electorate. In November 2022 I established a committee to tackle the shortage of GPs across regional Tasmania in concert with colleagues in the state government. It has paid off. The state government came on board. In the healthcare sector more generally, this committee has helped address some of the issues in my electorate. The primary care committee brought together the rural workforce agency, the primary health network, consumers and other stakeholders, including local and state government representatives, to develop a plan of action to fix the shortfall we have.

Our government's investing around $12 million in a single-employer model trial that we are trialling with the Tasmanian government, where the state government is the single employer of GPs. It's working. It's been a resounding success. We have funded up to 42 GPs to be employed under the single-employer model. We've also made investments in an innovative new community health model trial on Tasmania's east coast with cohealth, improving access by working with the community by offering healthcare options that suit their needs. There is no overnight fix, but it's real progress. The report also shows how, in the space of just two budgets, we have provided 350 packages targeted to strengthen our regional communities.

I could go on: the impact of fee-free TAFE, child care and the investments in Medicare. We are putting our attention on the regions, and only a Labor government is doing it.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to 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.

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak in support of the motion that has been brought forward by the member for Gilmore, and I just want to put it in the context of my electorate of Lingiari, which is about 1.1 million square kilometres. As I've said before in this place, it covers 76 remote communities and over 500 homelands—quite a vast part of the Northern Territory. It stretches from the saltwater country in the Top End to the deserts of Central Australia. As in other regional seats, I think some of the challenges in reaching our communities and dealing with our constituents are extremely difficult, particularly during the seasonal times such as we're seeing with the wet season, where we've seen many floods. There are communities, particularly in regional Northern Territory—places in the Barkly and Borroloola—where we're now facing the challenge for the first time of getting food drops, particularly going into those Gulf communities and homelands. There are challenges that certainly confront us in places like Lingiari.

Looking at some of those challenges, I want to pick up on one issue that we're addressing through action which will go a long way towards assisting particularly the young people in my electorate through the Real Jobs Program. The only way we're going to look at stimulating the economy and also make sure that those communities can have a positive outcome and build their economy is by having a jobs program. I think the Real Jobs Program is going to be really important for providing that pathway in the Top End.

When I was running the Northern Land Council, we started a program which was called the Learning on Country program. That program looked at how we address school attendance—how we get young people to engage in school and stay in school—and it looked at that pathway from school into a full-time job. That program went from having 200 young people participating to nearly 600 young people participating across a lot of the schools in the Top End. It is a success, and I think it's a success that we can build on, showing that one way to engage young people in the education system is to give them that pathway and that self belief that there is a pathway from school into a job. The Learning on Country program—which then has a pathway to a range of other programs, including learning on country, caring for country and playing a role in the environment, whether it's land or sea—is tailored particularly to build that economy on the ground in those communities. Given some of the challenges we have in remote Northern Territory communities, I think we have to look at things creatively and think outside of the square as to what we are going to do.

The state of Australia's regions report looked at some of the areas, and a couple of those were regional workforces in meeting the needs of today and tomorrow, and promoting economic aspirations. But the culture and the language of First Nations people need to be part of that process so that we can capitalise on the strengths of those communities and Aboriginal people. That way, we'll be able to get the best outcome, not just for the community but particularly for families in those communities. I think if those families can see their young people working and engaged, we will see a better outcome for those communities. That should be what we all aspire to; we should all work with those communities to try and get the best outcomes for Aboriginal people, particularly in those remote communities. The reality is that we're not going to get the big multibillion-dollar companies investing in those communities, so we have to look at how we build those small economies to make sure that they can participate.

I fully support the motion brought forward by my colleague. (Time expired)

Russell Broadbent (Monash, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a marvellous member for Lingiari you have proved to be! You had big shoes to fill and you've done a great job. It's obviously your experience and your ability that has led you to this place and to you making a great contribution. Congratulations!

Regions, and particularly my region, supply the water, the milk, supply the exports and supply the electricity. The regions deliver for Australia. You've heard from all the speakers that we're not getting a fair share of the pie, and that's been argued by government since I came here in the Hawke-Keating years. But let me say this to you. Under the earth in the Latrobe Valley we have thousands of years of supply of brown coal and yet we closed Hazelwood without a replacement. We'll close another power station without a replacement shortly, and we'll close another power station after that without a replacement. If we think that wind and solar are going to do it then every report that I read and everything that I've seen says that we can't do that; the technology isn't there.

What's happening in the regions overseas? China is more than happy, as said in Chris Mitchell's article in the Australian today, to profit from countries which are willing to sacrifice themselves at the altar of the church of carbon. And they're even happier to recycle those profits in securing coal at prices lower than they would otherwise be if so much international demand hadn't been removed voluntarily from the market, like we're doing. In fact, every discussion I've had here today or listened to, especially from government members, has been the government kicking themselves in the foot. That's except for the member for Lingiari who said: 'We're not going to get these big companies. We have problems in our region because of the very make-up of the seat of Lingiari.' I think that anyone who has a regional seat knows about those difficulties of transport and opportunity—even needing to have a licence to have a job. There are all those issues, and they're the ones which become extremely important.

I can't understand why a nation such as this, with the resources that we have—like those exposed in the Latrobe Valley—can't do what the Germans have done. The Germans have said: 'We can't rely on this renewable energy; it's not working the way we thought it would work. So we have built the very best efficient coal-fired power station that we could.' It's brand-new—the Germans, in Europe, building a new station. The Chinese are building the capacity of our whole power system every week—every week! And Australia is closing ours down and we produce approximately one per cent of the world's emissions. Some say it's three per cent and some say it's one. I don't know if it's one or three, but it's minute compared to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is getting on and doing what they need to do on behalf of their people. All I'm asking for the regions is that we have the resources to fulfil the energy needs of this nation and yet there are lots of barriers—whether that be for nuclear power or new coal-fired power stations—because state governments decide what they will do with those resources and not the federal government. We can give a lead and say, 'We'll help you to pay for it,' but we have no control.

If companies have sold off their power stations and aren't fixing the existing power stations to make them last then once again Australia is kicking itself in the foot. My experience tells me that there will be blackouts, and that's when the Australian people, when they have their backs to the wall, will say: 'No, sorry, enough! We want power and we wanted today.' There are two gas-fired power stations in Victoria, and they'll be running full-time. Everyone will say hooray except for the people who haven't produced the amount of gas in the ground which we could use. There is gas in the ground in Victoria, but we're not allowed to mine it. That's because the state government says we have a moratorium on gas mining. I think that's a shame, and I think the fact that we aren't using the coal in the ground in the Latrobe Valley is a shame. It will be detrimental to this nation in the long run, and we need to do something about it.

Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin by thanking the member for Gilmore for moving this important motion to discuss the Informing regional investment: state of Australia's regions 2024. Released by our Albanese government, this report is all about how we can best support our regions to respond to challenges and to harness opportunities. These are opportunities like future jobs growth in the clean energy sector. It's also about supporting regions through natural disasters like the bushfires we've seen in my home state of Victoria over the past week. My thoughts are with all the people who have lost their homes. Many locals in my communities have family and friends in the affected area, so, on their behalf, I extend my heartfelt thanks to our emergency service workers: the firies, the paramedics, the volunteers and the nurses. You are our frontline defenders when natural disaster strikes.

I also urge everyone in my electorate to check your bushfire emergency plans, tidy up your properties and prepare before Wednesday's forecasted heatwave. Let's do the work now to lower the risk of disaster and do our part to make sure emergency services workers aren't stretched beyond their limit.

I am proud to be part of a government that values the service of emergency workers and is committed to ensuring our regions are well prepared for natural disasters. This was noted in the State of the regions report. Facing increasingly likely natural disasters and presented with mounting opportunities for job growth, the Albanese government recognises our regions are in their defining decade. It's why we are supporting them to leverage the economic shifts that come with rapid population growth such as I've seen in my electorate of Corangamite in Victoria. I'm writing hundreds upon hundreds of letters every few months, welcoming to my electorate new members of the community who are ready to join our local workforce. On this point, the report notes that the last couple of years have seen significant population growth across all our regional centres, with many small businesses finding it difficult to meet local workforce demands. Our government is well aware of this challenge and is tackling the issue head on through our fee-free TAFE initiatives, which will see more skilled workers joining the labour market in the coming years.

The report also confirms that our regions are uniquely placed to benefit from the global transition to net zero, but it also acknowledges that the number of clean energy industry jobs will need to increase by about 30 per cent, or about 213,000 workers, by 2033. Through these findings and more, this report demonstrates our government's commitment to restoring leadership to regional policy.

The report also provides a snapshot of the Albanese government's actions to respond to these challenges. Our last two budgets included over 350 packages and individual measures that were all about strengthening regional communities. They are initiatives that place people at the forefront of regional growth. These initiatives include the employment white paper, regional university study hubs, our new migration strategy and, of course, our tax cuts, to be delivered by 1 July, which will make sure that more people in regional Australia can earn more and keep more of what they earn. We will invest $1 billion over three years in our new regional grants programs, which will provide regional livability in our regional towns and cities in partnership with local government and the community.

In closing, we know that success lies in listening to communities and local voices. They know what is best for our regions. We recognise that local solutions should be locally led, and that's an important key message of this report.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:23