Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on this budget night to address a couple of issues in tonight's budget. Obviously, it is early days. It's less than an hour since the budget speech was delivered, and, as with all complex documents, the devil is always going to be in the detail, so there is much work to be done in analysing this document and seeing where it hurts and who it hurts. But already a couple of things leaped out at me. These are only small programs—I admit that—but they're close to my heart.

I was deeply saddened, actually, to see in the budget a cut to support for agricultural shows. This isn't a large amount of money. It's only $2.8 million, but agricultural shows in our regions are the lifeblood of many communities. Just this year we've finally seen the return of the ag shows in my home state of Western Australia. Senator Smith is in the chamber and he would agree. I know he comes to the ag shows as well. We've finally seen the ag shows get up and running again after a couple of very hard years. These shows are huge events in their local communities—the Dowerin Agricultural Field Day, Newdegate and a number of agricultural shows across Western Australia which just represent so much to their local communities. The amount of support from the federal government wasn't large. It was a relatively small amount of money in budgetary terms, but it just gave those agricultural shows a lifeline in those years when they could not operate and could not earn any money, when the businesses in those communities could not participate and when agricultural industries could not showcase themselves to their own communities—such a vital endeavour. Yet this government, in its first budget, has taken the opportunity to take a $2.8 million save out of supporting agricultural shows.

That comes on top of the decision to cut round 6 of the Building Better Regions Fund, which has supported so many good projects across rural and regional Australia—small projects. These are projects which wouldn't normally get the attention of a federal government and which wouldn't normally be able to be funded by the sporting club or the local community or the local shire council but which gained a lifeline through the Building Better Regions Fund. We've seen that round 6 cut: 815 applications. That represents 815 community groups across this country who worked hard to put those applications in. In some cases, those applications would have been the result of thousands of dollars of volunteer labour and hundreds of hours of work from volunteers in putting those applications together. And all those projects were just sent a letter that said: 'Sorry. No chance. You're not going to get any money. There might be a program you can apply for in the future. We'll see.'

That is 815 community groups across rural and regional Australia who were just after a bit of a lifeline—a bit of help for a project that otherwise would not see the light of day. These projects aren't massive things. They're cultural and language centres on the Albany Harbour foreshore. They're upgrades to airstrips at places like Laverton and Katanning in Western Australia—small rural and regional communities. They don't have the funds to do these kinds of upgrades and projects themselves. The Building Better Regions Fund offered them a lifeline,—a chance to get some funding from the Commonwealth government and have these projects taken forward—and it's deeply saddening to see these cuts in this budget.