Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start with an apology to those opposite, because in my speech today I'll be mentioning places that they've never heard of. They are places where the coalition spent many millions of dollars to deliver life-changing projects that reflect the importance of those places away from the big football stadiums, Cross River Rail and eight-lane highways—places where $3 million can build a new grandstand at the local football club and transform the entire district for generations.

Without viable regional communities, Australia stops. Without consistent and significant funding of roads and community infrastructure, regional Australia does it a whole lot tougher. The coalition understands this. The National Party understands this. But those who really need to understand it, the Labor government, are happy for regional Australia to fend for itself. But, of course, they still want all the goodies the regions produce—all that tax and royalties from mining and all that healthy trade surplus and GDP boost from agriculture.

Currently, the resources sector as a whole supports over 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs within Australia, contributing over $32.6 billion in direct salaries in 2021. The government has even acknowledged that the resources sector is to thank for a $50 billion budget boost this year. The Australian oil and gas industry directly and indirectly supports over 80,000 jobs. It contributed over $5.35 billion in tax in 2019-20 and recorded a $15.9 billion surplus in the trade of oil and gas. Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry paid more than over $64.4 billion to the government, with contributions spanning decades, totalling $161 billion since the mid-1980s. That is a lot of roads, hospitals and schools that ordinary taxpayers didn't have to fund. Let's not forget that mine workers earn about twice the national average wage, and their taxes also flow into Canberra's coffers. Agriculture is worth $71 billion a year to the Australian economy, almost exclusively generated in the regions. Both of these industries support entire towns by providing employment.

When you look at these staggering figures, it's hard to believe any government would consider cutting the artery to the beating heart of its economy. But that's what Labor are proposing. They had an election promise to scrap the Community Development Grants Program, the scheme responsible for completing Charleston Dam near Forsayth in Far North Queensland, which I opened this year. This dam has opened up the area to tourism at unheard-of levels and provided water security for the agricultural district. I can point to Tully, also in Far North Queensland. Under the Community Development Grants Program, the town received $3 million for a new grandstand at the rugby league ground. This grandstand now allows Tully to host higher-standard league matches, as well as tossing the golden gumboot, and allows it to host large conferences and events. Let's also not forget the $1.5 million to dredge an important waterway at Cardwell in North Queensland. This is just a snapshot of my home region—not a National Party seat either, can I mention? Similar stories of relatively small funding making a massive difference can be found around the country. In comparison to the money generated in regional Australia, these are truly paltry amounts, yet they represent so much more than just numbers on a balance sheet.

Labor likes to describe this investment as pork-barrelling. Try explaining that to a country netball club that finally got a roof over its court or a town that can now boast that its roads are fully sealed. The Prime Minister said recently:

We will fund projects including in regional Australia that stack up, that represent good investment for taxpayers.

If you apply a return on investment standard for funding for regional areas, nothing will ever get approved under this government. A bureaucrat will say there's just not enough population to justify widening a road at Boulia, or a new town hall at Kununurra, which is exactly why the coalition viewed funding arrangements through a prism of community benefits.

It's not just the minor projects facing Labor's axe. We also read that the $5 billion Inland Rail extension to Gladstone is likely to be axed. What an appalling signal to send regional Queenslanders who committed the cardinal sin of not voting Labor at the last election. Labor's attitude to the regions threatened to widen the divide between city and country, between the haves and have-nots. If you live in the city, Labor will spend billions to make sure you can get to work five minutes earlier, but if you need a new hall for the CWA ladies in your small town, you'd better start selling raffle tickets. Some 8.8 million people live in regional Australia, and they're not asking for special treatment. They're simply asking for a level playing field.

Labor says funding for the regions is pork-barrelling and waste. We say it's delivering for the families, the men and the women and the Indigenous communities that deliver the food, the fibre and the mining that feeds, clothes and enriches all of Australia. So on behalf of the Boulias, the Tullys the Katherines, the Hughendens and the Kununurras, I'm asking Labor to view funding for regional Australia as among the most important duties they can undertake. We need to keep the regions attractive to young families by providing good Internet, safe roads, great health and aged care, and excellent schools. This will have the added effect of reducing urban congestion and easing pressure on city infrastructure. Spending money in regional Australia is not a cost—it's an investment. I would ask the government to remember this at budget time, because it is these towns and these people who without this appropriate infrastructure investment in social services, infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals and Internet connectivity will be forced to be FIFO workers, to live on the coast and fly out to these communities. We know what the result of that is. The result is divorce, broken families and poorer mental health.

In the regions you can have a great lifestyle. You can have a fantastic community. Families can go home and play sport. They can be involved with their children's lives. They can volunteer at the local race club. They can be an important part of the community where people know their names. Instead, if it were left up to these centralised governments, people would live more and more on the coast, going away from these great communities and leaving all of these important industries to be FIFO industries. That's not the Australian way to do it. We didn't grow up, we didn't raise our culture, and we don't look back on our history as being a whole country of people who just appear on Monday morning and fly out on Friday night. That doesn't build the pubs, the community halls, the dances, the races and the great jobs that you can have. There's more responsibility at a younger age and really rewarding, productive jobs. For Indigenous communities, particularly in the north of Australia but also right across, it's about investment in roads that are all-weather, meaning that they are not cut off for five months of the year, that they can access modern culture and that they can engage in genuine jobs. It means they're not all forced to be rangers. They can have other jobs. That's what we're denying people when we stop these investments in regional and rural Australia.

People call for funding into regional Australia. That funding is best understood by the men and women who represent those communities, who come from those places and, yes, darn it, make decisions. They tell their bureaucrats: 'Great. Here is a list of projects that you've approved as all being eligible, but we're going to pick this one, because we know they don't have the best grant writer in Australia. We know they don't have thousands of people to support these projects and sign petitions and glue themselves to the street.' What we have is local members who go into bat for the little towns and communities who do the jobs, who support these communities, who give young people great lifestyles and who give us the culture that we like to celebrate when we talk about being Australian.

So every time you hear Labor say 'pork-barrelling', in your head you can say, 'Cutting us off at the knees, turning us into a nation of FIFO workers with mental health problems, with divorce and without the great lifestyle that they are being denied in rural and regional Australia.'