Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, the leader of the Liberal-National government, happily locked in $83.7 million worth of cuts to the ABC. As a result of the decision of the Prime Minister of this country, Australians will miss out on this much-loved content that is part of Australia's media, sporting and cultural identity. This will hit hard in country and remote areas, particularly where the ABC Radio broadcast is often the only way of keeping up-to-date with what's going on at the Olympics. I agree with the Australian Olympic Committee President, John Coates, who said that the decision of this government would especially disappoint rural and regional Australians who might not have access to commercial or television coverage of next year's event. When the government cuts the ABC, Australians miss out, especially those in rural and regional Australia. The government knew that when they made those cuts—$84 million—but they went ahead with them anyway. This is the end of an era in Australian sporting coverage via radio, and that is a decision made by the Australian Prime Minister. That denial of access is on the Prime Minister's hands.

With regard to drought, I was recently in Dubbo. It's located in the vast seat of Parkes, which takes up most of the north-west of New South Wales. I have the privilege of being the duty senator for that area. I visited Dubbo in September with my friend and colleague Jason Clare, the member for Blaxland, who is the shadow minister for regional services, territories and local government, and also the shadow minister for housing and homelessness. In his policy areas he has particular care for the people in regional and rural Australia who are affected by the decisions of this government. We spoke with the local community, farmers, businesses, council, chambers of commerce and charities about the impact of this prolonged drought and the recently implemented water restrictions in Dubbo. Dubbo is a strong and resilient town, but, sadly, it seems to be forgotten by those opposite, because there's no sense of an integrated plan for the town at a federal level, especially when it comes to the drought. The council are doing everything that they can to plan, and their pleas to the federal government are falling on deaf ears.

We've had senators in here running off lists of money that they say are in the pipeline, but there are no pipes. There are no pipelines to feed the water out to Wellington. There's no investment, after seven years in government. They could see there was an opportunity and they denied it. They didn't prepare this country for the drought, because they had no plan, and people in regional and rural Australia are reaping the costs of that failure to invest properly—the failure to plan; the failure to deliver for the people of rural and regional Australia. The coalition have done nothing to prepare those regions of our country, and the communities that live in them, for the drought. They've done nothing since 2013.

We are in the midst of the most extreme drought on record. We know that towns are running out of water, and there has been no meaningful action by this government. The drought rages on. Farmers and rural communities lack a voice in this government, and the consequences are showing. Frankly, it's disturbing how poorly this government has mismanaged water policy in this country. Yes, we need it to rain and rain and rain—if only to just end the fires that are now alight across New South Wales. We went from catastrophe yesterday to emergency today, and there's no end in sight.

For farmers, we need meaningful, futureproofing rain and infrastructure, which the government still are not investing in. I think we can agree that the rural sector is tired of the ad hoc, piecemeal approach to drought reform. Labor have been saying for years that we support any measure the government want to take to support drought-affected farmers and communities. In fact, Mr Albanese was in Dubbo when he made that announcement, in a bipartisan way. You put up any proposal about investment in the bush, in regional and rural Australia, and we will support it. That is what he said, within weeks of taking the role of Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labor Party. And what have we seen? The federal government are sitting on their hands.

We hear announcement after announcement, but the reality is not hitting the ground. There were two more drought thought bubbles last Wednesday and Thursday from this lacklustre government, which fails all the basic tests. These latest political manoeuvrings came after the Prime Minister's bungled Drought Communities Program announcement in September, when Mr Morrison was caught out trying to give funding to councils in Victoria and South Australia that aren't actually in drought—yet there are communities in great need who cannot get assistance in a timely way from this government that seems deaf to their pleas.

Small businesses across these communities are failing by the dozen. This is a government that says it supports small business, but small business cannot thrive in a climate where the government fails to do its job. Small businesses can't build great infrastructure. They rely on governments of vision to do that, and they need that building to be done before droughts hit. Rural and regional centres like Dubbo are resilient and have been incredibly prosperous. They are surviving in extremely difficult circumstances, but they deserve better than an incompetent government that has failed, for over half a decade, to plan for the infrastructure necessary to provide water security to this community and the communities that surround it.

The Morrison government has failed to make the disparity of health outcomes between rural- and metropolitan-dwelling Australians a priority in terms of health policy. Your postcode should not determine your level of health care. But unfortunately, under this inept government, this is the reality for a lot of people. We know that health outcomes for rural Australians are significantly below those in metropolitan Australia. Overall the burden of disease is 10 per cent higher in regional areas, 30 per cent higher in rural areas and a staggering 70 per cent higher in remote Australia. That is happening because the government has not properly looked after getting Australian-trained doctors into the right parts of this country. It has failed on so many fronts. I'd need another 40 minutes to document the gross level of failure of this government— (Time expired)