Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I address the parliament to talk about vision—a vision for rural Australia and regional Australia. Quite often it is said that, if a nation has no vision, it will perish. I am a strong believer that, together, the Liberal Party and the National Party have a vision of what this country can look like.

Some of the great things we have announced over the last number of weeks have been the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement, and now the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. This is a great result—the result of a lot of hard work for many years—and it is very pleasing that, within the first year of this coalition government, we have delivered these free trade agreements and are going to see them implemented.

A free trade agreement in itself is just an opportunity. It is a great opportunity, but we have to turn the opportunity into a reality. We have to make sure that the opportunity that presents itself in a free trade agreement translates to wealth for every Australian and for regional Australians. I am very pleased, particularly, with the free trade agreement with China that has been announced. In my electorate people are walking down the street and are very happy. There has been no negative response across the electorate, because they know that the electorate that I represent is an export electorate. It is an electorate that exports wheat; it exports dairy; it exports table grapes; it exports almonds; it exports carrots; and it exports juice. It is very much an electorate that I am very proud to represent because, in a good year, it would produce $5.3 billion worth of economic activity for the nation of Australia.

But we have to make sure that we can turn this opportunity into reality, and, in doing that, we need to invest in our infrastructure. One of the things that needs to happen in my electorate, of course, is better rail services—freight rail for the township of Mildura and, ultimately, passenger rail for the township of Horsham. We do have passenger rail for Swan Hill currently. We also need to have better air services, and I have been pushing very hard and will be talking with the minister responsible in the next couple of weeks about $25 million to upgrade the runway so that we can continue to take 737s into the township of Mildura. It is quite exciting to see how it has grown.

If we are going to grow our rural Australia and our inland cities, we have to have more than just agriculture. It is one thing for agriculture to be a stimulus and to have industries that service agriculture, but we also need to diversify our rural economies. This is the reason education reform is so critical. In my towns I have several universities—Federation University Australia and La Trobe University. We have very high numbers of first-generation completers of university. It has been really very interesting to get to know. They are not people who will travel to a big city to go to university for cultural or family reasons. They need to have that university quite close.

But it is so important that we have that higher learning in our country towns. The reason is this: if you look at all the statistics, and you get a country student and give them that higher education, they are likely to then go out, travel the world and get as much life experience as they can. But, when it comes time for them to start a small business, they are more likely to come to a rural area and start that small business than any student who has been based in the cities and has not had that life experience of what regional Australia can offer. This is why it is so important that we develop our tertiary opportunities for our country kids.

If we are going to grow our country towns, we also need to have a community of interest. We need to have our daily newspapers, our radio and our televisions. In so many of our country towns the local newspaper is owned by the person who writes in the paper; it is also owned by the person who edits the paper; and it is also owned by the person who takes the photography. The local paper is a small business. I just want to say that I am so in awe of the ingenuity and determination of those little country papers that hold communities together.

One of the other things that are very important for regional towns to grow is to have some government departments that also see the value of investing in those towns. I have been pushing very hard in one of my towns, the township of Mildura, to get greater placement of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority in that town. The township of Mildura is where you have the Murray River, of course—the magnificent Murray—and you also have the Darling River, which comes in and intersects at Wentworth. So just there, in that local community, you have the intersection of the two major rivers in the east coast of Australia.

Having the Murray-Darling Basin Authority based in a country town also means that they are more responsive to asset management. They are more responsive to understanding the ebbs and flows of the river, because I have a strong belief that rural people have a passion for and an affinity with the land. When the land is hurting, they are hurting. When the river is healthy, they are healthy. It is something that is very hard to explain but is innately in us in rural Australia. I think having some government departments in our country cities is a good way of sending a signal that we also, as a government, believe that the future of Australia is across the whole breadth of Australia, not simply hugged on the coast.

There also need to be services and infrastructure. I am really pleased that in the last number of months, in partnership with the Victorian coalition, we have announced the rollout of natural gas. If you combine food production, for example, with water, cheap energy and clean energy and then freight links, you create the framework for development. You create the framework for jobs. I think this is very, very important if we are going to grow the entrepreneurial spirit that lives in those country towns.

Just on the entrepreneurial spirit, can I just point out that an electorate a long, long time ago in Melbourne once got 85 per cent of the funding for a local swimming pool, whereas the electorate in Mallee once got 15 per cent of the funding for a local swimming pool. The electorate in Melbourne chose not to go ahead because they did not get all the money, and the electorate in Mallee thought, 'Fifteen per cent, you beauty!' and they fundraised and made it happen. That is something that is great about the entrepreneurial spirit of the people that I represent.

The other thing that is very good, and I just want to send this signal out to all Australians, is that you can have an amazing lifestyle on a much cheaper budget. You can swim in the Murray in my electorate, and I can guarantee—I can guarantee this, ironclad, in parliament; I would even do this without parliamentary privilege—that you will not get eaten by a shark. I can guarantee that you will not get eaten by a crocodile. Here is a fantastic waterway where it is safe to swim, and your expectancy of getting out of the water on the other side without being eaten by a shark or eaten by a crocodile is very strong. Not only that but you can buy a house in my electorate—you can buy a nice second-hand house, probably about 10 years old, with two bedrooms and a manicured garden—for under $200,000. If you want to step up to something where you might get half an acre with a shed so the bloke can run out to the shed and tinker and you can have your dog, you can get that for about $350,000. The opportunity to shift to a regional area and have a very nice place to live and a very high standard of living is important.

I know this even from my staff. We had our staff Christmas party last year, and my staff do not receive very high wages, but one of them turned up in their houseboat, another one turned up on their four-person jet ski and other one turned up in their ski boat, and we had a barbecue on the houseboat. Now you cannot compare what that would cost if you were going to have that experience and you were living on the coast. The opportunity to have a very high standard of living at minimal wages is affordable in regional Australia.

So I have a vision. I have a vision that we can do this. I have a vision that, together with good government policy, with opportunities that are presented through free trade agreements and the exports that we can deliver, with the individual pursuits of the average Australian and their entrepreneurial spirits, and with government, community and good export opportunities we can grow the wealth for all Australians, for regional Australians and city Australians. That is why I am very proud to be part of a government that is prepared to make tough decisions at times, but right decisions, to ensure that our vision leads to better prosperity for average Australians.