Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll first say, in rising today to speak on this MPI, that I must have woken up this morning in a parallel universe. I thought that Labor had spent the last few months denouncing themselves over just how out of touch with regional and rural Australia they are. Didn't their own internal election review say that Labor's spending announcements and tax policies fuelled anxiety among people in outer urban and regional Australia that Labor would crash the economy and risk their jobs? Didn't their review find that outer metropolitan, provincial and rural Australia swung against Labor? Now they want to come into this chamber and lecture the government on what is best for regional and rural Australia.

Isn't Labor the party that just announced a ban on native forestry in Victoria—a ban which will cost thousands of jobs in regional communities? What's worse is the Victorian Labor government deliberately released that policy on the exact same day that Labor released its federal election review, to give itself some cover from negative press attention. You couldn't get a better example of the complete mess and the absolute hypocrisy that is the Labor Party: the Victorian Labor Party announced a policy to kill off thousands of jobs in the regional communities and used, as cover, a federal Labor review that found Labor is out of touch with regional Australia. And what was the coalition government doing on that exact same day last week? We were announcing a billion-dollar expansion of our drought assistance measures for rural and regional Australia.

As the Prime Minister has said, helping our farmers in regional communities is a top policy priority of this government. We have a comprehensive policy agenda to support the regions—an agenda which was endorsed by voters, particularly in regional Australia. It is an agenda that we are already delivering on, including a plan for agriculture backed by $4 billion in funding; a record investment of $100 billion in infrastructure projects across our country, with a heavy focus on regional roads and rail; additional funding for the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund; the $550 million Stronger Rural Health Strategy; and delivering new trade agreements which will allow the produce and products from regional Australia to get to new markets—creating jobs and investment at home. We're backing in forestry, mining and fisheries—all industries which will create jobs in regional Australia, and industries towards which Labor vacillates between being lukewarm at best to downright hostile at worst.

As one Labor frontbencher recently said about the current party, Labor is 'too quick to dismiss people with opposing views as obviously wrong, probably stupid and possibly subhuman'. Where will you find a large proportion of people with opposing views to Labor—those people that, according to one of their own, they treat as 'stupid and possibly subhuman'? You will find them in regional Australia. So, please, give us a spell from the Labor lectures about what regional Australia wants, when this coalition government has a clear plan and is already investing in these areas. In my own state of Tasmania, we are seeing significant investment in agriculture and in Battery of the Nation. We are putting $100 million into irrigation to ensure that our farmers will continue to thrive. We have a plan and we are delivering on that plan—and I'm sick of being lectured by those on the other side that can't seem to see the reality of our hard work.