Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government and their New South Wales colleagues are intent on slashing and burning funding in regional New South Wales, my home state. It's no wonder when Labor's own campaign bus can't leave Sydney without getting a flat battery. Not only can they not represent us; they won't even visit us. When the Labor government were elected last year they cut—and I thank Senator Sterle for reminding us—$9.6 billion from infrastructure projects. What does that mean for regional Australia? Across the forward estimates there was $7 billion cut from dams, including from two major dams in New South Wales at Dungowan and Wyangala. These vital water storage projects, which secure the essential water supply for our regional communities, have been gutted. The communities around them are gutted and the ability to plan for the future is destroyed.

What is more concerning is that we know that federal Labor and New South Wales Labor don't care about New South Wales regional areas either. These people are all about cost-benefit ratios, or CBRs, and, where there aren't people, they don't stack up. When we put money there, it's called a rort or a waste, but it's like the chicken and the egg. If you don't build the roads and the infrastructure, people can't go there. In COVID we saw people move to the regions. They moved for the lifestyle, they moved for a tree change or they moved for a sea change. They realised they could have a better life outside of cities. But housing supply was tight, the infrastructure wasn't there and they returned to the cities. If you spend this money in regional areas, they will come. We have regions of dreams, not fields of dreams, in our country. Build it and they will come.

But the government cut, delay and rip the hearts out of regional communities. It is important to expose the legacy of this federal government after just nine months in office because it's a foretaste of what—