Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Would you offer me one of your side’s 15 minutes? Life has never been easy for the people who choose to live, raise their families and run their businesses in regional Australia. There have been times, when wool was a pound a pound, when the regions were reasonably wealthy. It has never been easy, but I notice that people out there do not want us to make it easy, they want us to make it a little bit easier. I think they are very proud of the fact that they are seriously self-sufficient, or as self-sufficient as they can be. We need to be aware that all of the actions the government took as a consequence of the global financial crisis were beneficial, but in regional Australia some of those actions have been particularly important. The cash payments portion of the stimulus of course assisted the retail sectors in regional Australia. In small towns, shops that really needed to be open were able to stay open because people had money to spend in them. One of the interesting figures that came out of the December payments was that the usual January spike in missed mortgage payments did not occur, so people were able to have their Christmas and keep the house. The regional community infrastructure program has been well received out there, as has the Jobs Fund, which is a very important scheme. I know that in all sorts of regions of Australia, including on the Gold Coast, the Jobs Fund is hopefully helping a large number of people, including through the Broadbeach Surf Life Saving Club, whose deputy president is in the chamber today.

Those reactions of the government are typical—to pick up a thread from a previous speaker and a previous report—Keynesian responses. If the bush is vital, if the regions are vital to this country, we need to ensure that we keep people there and, in the absence of investment by private industry, private investors, we also need to ensure that the government is doing its bit to assist those areas to continue to operate in a way that we would like. It would be wonderful, although very difficult, if government jobs, be they in sections of departmental offices, could be moved into the regions. That would be an excellent thing. Canberra is virtually recession proof because of the number of public servants who live here, yet we do not have that in the regions.

There is not an area that I went to that is not looking forward to better broadband infrastructure. What we as a government are doing in relation to providing national broadband will certainly create enormous benefits for those living in the regions. I am pleased to be able to speak today in support of this program, and I thank the House for the opportunity.

Debate (on motion by Mr Laming) adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

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