Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was an incredible privilege to be elected as the federal member for Flynn at the 2022 federal election. I've worked hard to get around to as many local communities as possible, and this has been a significant challenge, given the fact that the Flynn electorate is over 132,000 square kilometres, an area almost twice the size of Tasmania. It stretches from the Central Highlands in the west to Gracemere in the north to Gladstone in the east and Wondai and Proston in the south. I travel approximately 50,000 kilometres a year, staying in touch with our local communities, and spend 20 weeks a year in Canberra representing Flynn in the federal parliament. In my first year as the federal member I spent 73 nights at home.

In this time, I've seen firsthand the detrimental impacts that legislation and policies can have on our regional communities. The Labor government continues to implement the one-size-fits-all bureaucratic policy that just does not work.

One issue that I hear about constantly is the lack of child care in regional Australia. In my electorate, many families cannot find child care or a place for their child. This is a preventing parents from returning to work sooner. Our communities need availability and accessibility as well as affordability. Centres are capping enrolments, closing rooms and asking children to stay home. I've spoken to families stuck on waiting lists, unable to work because there are no places to look after their children.

In February this year the Labor government opened competitive round 4 of the Community Child Care Fund disadvantaged and vulnerable communities grants. The intent of the communities grant is to support early childhood education and care, ECEC, services operating in underserved, disadvantaged and vulnerable communities to be able to address, or have increased capacity to address, community-level barriers to child participation in early childhood services. It is also to increase the number of children from vulnerable or disadvantaged families and communities accessing ECEC; to increase the viability of ECEC services operating in disadvantaged communities, including in areas with fluctuating and/or low short-term demand; and to increase the availability of ECEC places in disadvantaged communities with high or unmet demand.

Whilst I welcome these grants and their intent, they're another example of bureaucratic nonsense. This grants round was open for one month—just one month. The Labor government and the minister obviously do not want anybody to apply. The eligibility criteria mean that small community kindergartens in rural and remote Australia who wish to expand to make day care services available are ineligible to receive the Community Child Care Fund disadvantaged and vulnerable communities grants because they cannot get approval for childcare services under the family assistance law until the grant is received and the facility is built in the first place. What genius came up with this idea? Instead of taking action to improve access to child care for rural Australians, Labor is spending billions on subsidising childcare costs for families in the big city whilst ignoring rural and regional Australia.

In September 2022, I wrote to the Treasurer about the increasing community concerns around the lack of child care in the electorate of Flynn, especially in our more rural regions, and the financial barriers to entering the sector when establishing a family day care centre. This government must deliver more access to early childhood education and care places to support Australians returning to the workforce and for real cost-of-living relief for families.

It has been almost two years since the federal government made its 2022 election commitments. Hundreds of projects have failed to commence, according to documents recently released to parliament. Organisations and councils in Flynn have been unfairly subjected to long and unnecessary bureaucratic processes. Our community has been forced to jump through the Albanese government's hoops just to receive the funding that was promised to them before Labor was elected. In my electorate, four projects have failed to commence and are still being held up by Labor's incompetence. These include stage 3B of the promised Biloela Raedon Street industrial estate. This was set to create up to 100 skilled jobs, with the facility giving local entrepreneurs the workshop space they need to compete for more industrial work and leading to more skilled jobs for local workers. I ask the government: where is the money?

The Boyne Tannum Football Club, the Sharks, clubhouse expansion was promised. This expansion included facilities that would allow players to have access to state-of-the-art sporting venues. More than 250 players, coaches and volunteers play on the Sharks football field, not to mention the tens of thousands of families, friends and visitors who come to the venue each year. Again I ask the government: where is the money? The Gladstone regional indoor sports complex was promised. It was set to have a new facility to host basketball, futsal, MMA, netball, volleyball, roller derby and a host of other indoor activities. Again, I ask: where is the money? The aquatic centre for Boyne Island and Tannum Sands was promised. It was set to deliver a brand-new aquatics facility, including an Olympic-sized pool with aquatic play and exercise features for many families. Once again, where is the money? These delays demonstrate the low regard the Albanese government has for Flynn community groups. Councils have been left in the lurch by the Labor government after they were promised these projects would be delivered.

I would like to make the chamber aware of a group of high-profile agriculturalists, including agricultural bodies such as AgForce and the Queensland Farmers Federation, that have filed pending legal action in the Federal Court with respect to the carbon dioxide sequestering project in the Great Artesian Basin by resources giant Glencore. This project was deemed not to be a controlled action by the federal EPBC office in February 2021. It defies logic that the EPBC Act in its current form offers no protection to the waters of the Great Artesian Basin unless it concerns coal or gas.

The Great Artesian Basin is the world's largest underground potable water source. It needs to be protected from the lunacy of dumping industrial waste to create carbon credits so that large corporations can generate billions in revenue. Last year, the Nationals proposed a critical amendment to the Nature Repair Bill 2023 to protect the Great Artesian Basin from companies pumping hypercritical CO2 fluid into it. However, the Labor government and the Greens voted the amendment down—another deplorable decision by this government.

Last week, the Queensland Labor government announced that $500 million had been committed to the beef corridors in Central Queensland, despite the federal Labor government pushing back the start date of the upgrade from the 2025 financial year until the 2027-28 financial year. The project was due to be funded jointly, with $400 million from the federal government and $100 million from the state government. Premier Miles and Prime Minister Albanese need to jump in the car and see firsthand how bad these roads are. They need to stop making decisions affecting the lives of our regional communities from their desks in Brisbane and Canberra. I invite both of them to come for a drive in a truck, and I'm sure they'll have a change of mind. Central Queensland is the economic engine room of Australia and yet the Labor government continues to kick vital infrastructure funding to the bottom of the priority list. The Labor government's decision to delay funding for the beef corridors is evidence that they're happy to treat Central Queensland like a cash cow but not to invest in the infrastructure the regions need. This delay places a question mark over the project, a project which has the support of seven mayors from seven Queensland local government areas.

Why is it that the Labor government continues to bite the hand that feeds it? The government has introduced a new tax to parliament which will force Australian farmers to pay for biosecurity costs on international importers, pushing up prices on Australian-grown produce at supermarkets. The Labor government will now set the tax rate as a proportion of an industry's average gross value for production over a three-year period, rather than the base rate of 10 per cent on industry-led levies, due to confusion in the levy system and inequities. Yet, at the same time, they've betrayed Central Queensland by delaying the beef corridors upgrade, which is an upgrade that will not only improve road safety for all users but form a strategic web of agricultural supply chains from east to west. The beef corridors upgrade is about improving road safety for all road users while enhancing productivity through reducing or eliminating impediments on delivery.

It's been almost two years since the last federal election, and we've seen failure after failure in Central Queensland by this Labor government. I will continue to hold it to account, and I will be campaigning hard for the return of a coalition government at the next election.