Mark Coulton's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Federal Election | Statements by Members | House debates
After 17-and-a-bit years, this is my last speech in this place as the member for Parkes. I want to say how proud I have been to represent such a wonderful part of Australia. The people of...
After 17-and-a-bit years, this is my last speech in this place as the member for Parkes. I want to say how proud I have been to represent such a wonderful part of Australia. The people of Australia need to know that my constituents feed them and clothe them, keep their lights on, and work every day. The unemployment rate in the Parkes electorate is below the national average. But a word of warning: do not take these people for granted. In the last three years, despite the cessation of work on the Inland Rail and other government decisions, no senior ministers have been here. We've had a few nondescript senators wander through from time to time but no senior ministers. The people of Parkes are not happy about this. To show you the contempt the Labor Party has for the Parkes electorate, we're on the eve of an election—apparently it's going to be called tomorrow—and they don't have a candidate yet. They don't have a candidate for the seat of Parkes. Jamie Chaffey has been out there. He's knocked on about 22,000 doors and has been campaigning for eight months. That's how seriously the National Party takes representation in this place. In what has notionally been considered a safe seat, I have a candidate out there who has been working for eight months. It has been a great privilege, but it's time to move on.
National Apology to the Stolen Generations: 17th Anniversary | Statements by Members | House debates
Today marks the 17th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generation made by Kevin Rudd in this place. It also coincides with the anniversary of my very first day as a member of...
Today marks the 17th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generation made by Kevin Rudd in this place. It also coincides with the anniversary of my very first day as a member of parliament—a day that I'll never forget. As I'm coming to the end of my time here, I'm reflecting on things. I represent, in terms of percentage, the second-highest Indigenous population of any electorate in Australia, following only Lingiari in the Northern Territory. The relationships I've formed and the work I've done with Aboriginal communities over that time is something that I take a great deal of pride in—the friends that I've made and the successes and sometimes heartaches we've shared. One of the great success stories has been the Clontarf Foundation, which I've championed in this place right from the beginning. Across my electorate, we've got many of the foundation's campuses. Tomorrow, on the Senate lawn, Clontarf will be putting on a game of football—rugby league—and I'm looking forward to being part of that. Later in the week, there will be a presentation in the House from Clontarf as well. Because of Clontarf, hundreds of young men have graduated from high school and gone on to further education, employment, the military and a whole range of other things. The Aboriginal people in my electorate are working hard, and Clontarf has the next generation of leaders coming through.
Albanese Government: Infrastructure | Statements by Members | House debates
The Labor Party has a real problem at the moment. They've just worked out that on the slim chance that they win the next election they'll have nothing to do because they've spent the last 2½...
The Labor Party has a real problem at the moment. They've just worked out that on the slim chance that they win the next election they'll have nothing to do because they've spent the last 2½ years opening projects funded by the previous government, full time. So what are their junior ministers and nondescript senators going to do in the next term? I've got a few suggestions. How about a sod-filling ceremony for the section of Inland Rail that didn't get started? We could have a bushwalk in the area that Narrabri Shire bought for their inland port. Maybe a game of cricket on the parched cotton fields where water was taken to give to South Australia to get votes in the Senate down there? For the real thrillseekers, I've got a beauty: crossing the Newell Highway with a road train full of grain at the site where $44 million for the overpass that was to make access to the Moree grain terminals safe was removed. That would be a great thing to do. This government has spent an entire session opening projects from funding that has been removed. Roads of Strategic Importance is no longer there. Building Better Regions—no longer there. For the ones that they have funded, they gave the money to the state government, who haven't handed it on yet. Growing Regions—not one cent has flown through to where it's needed.
Wee Waa Hospital | Constituency Statements | House debates
Basic health care is something that all Australians should have access to. And so can you imagine the frustration of a community that has had a service that is no longer available? The community...
Basic health care is something that all Australians should have access to. And so can you imagine the frustration of a community that has had a service that is no longer available? The community of Wee Waa have been very angry and upset by the actions of Hunter New England Health. They have closed Wee Waa Hospital. The emergency department closes at 5.30 every day. There is no visiting medical officer, and this hospital is largely underutilised. There are wards with beds. There are treatment rooms. Everything is ready to go. Despite the reassurances of the independent state member and the New South Wales health minister, there appears to be no action by Hunter New England Health in this regard. Hunter New England Health do have form there, I think, showing a lack of interest in the issues of and services for people in northern New South Wales. The community of Wee Waa have been publicly protesting. They have been trying to reach out to the New South Wales government. The Narrabri Shire Council mayor, Mayor Tiemens, has been very active in this space. It just needs the hierarchy and the leadership of Hunter New England Health to step out of Newcastle, go to Wee Waa, and come up with a solution. There are four doctors in Wee Waa, and none of them have the VMO rights at the local hospital. We are coming up to the cotton-picking season. There will be lots of heavy machinery and lots of people working in the fields. Young mums will need to bypass Wee Waa to go to Narrabri to have a baby. But it's not just Wee Waa. Wee Waa Hospital services a big community, largely to the west. There are communities from Burren Junction up to Rowena and nearly as far out as Walgett. Those people of western New South Wales rely on Wee Waa Hospital. I'm calling on the New South Wales government and Hunter New England Health to get behind the people of Wee Waa, get their skates on, hop in the car, drive to Wee Waa and fix this problem that should be very, very simply fixed with just a bit of gumption and purpose. The people of Wee Waa deserve a health service that's reliable and available, and I'm backing them in on this.
On Farm Connectivity Program | Statements by Members | House debates
After hearing speech after speech from members reading speaking notes from central HQ of the Labor Party, I've got an issue they might be interested to get their heads around: the debacle that...
After hearing speech after speech from members reading speaking notes from central HQ of the Labor Party, I've got an issue they might be interested to get their heads around: the debacle that was the rollout of round 2 of the On Farm Connectivity Program. Round 1 of the On Farm Connectivity Program, $15 million, took five months to expend. Now, don't get me wrong. This is a great program. This is assistance to help innovative farmers develop the connectivity across their farm, whether it's for monitoring of water or soil temperature or it's increasing the mobile coverage. But guess what? Round 2, $18 million, was expended in four days, of which two were a weekend. It wasn't announced publicly. It was on a website that farmers had to find. So, in four days, $18 million—four days. The maximum amount is $30,000. That's 600 applications they supposedly processed in two working days and finished the program off. I smell a rat, big time. There is something very, very strange going on, and it's very much in alignment with round 6 of the Mobile Black Spot Program, where, in New South Wales, all but one of those towers went into Labor-held seats, and I think eight or 10 of those never got built because there was actually no proposal to build them. Communication is important to the bush, and this government needs to take it seriously.
Rural and Regional Health Services | Private Members' Business | House debates
This motion is most appropriate. One of the issues that constantly comes to my three offices in western New South Wales is vacancies and the need for more health professionals. As of yesterday,...
This motion is most appropriate. One of the issues that constantly comes to my three offices in western New South Wales is vacancies and the need for more health professionals. As of yesterday, it's been 17 years since I was elected. The Member for Blair and I turned up on the same day. There have always been attempts to look for a silver bullet—the quick answer to fixing these problems. With regard to health, we've actually made it considerably worse. The idea of paying health professionals, whether they're doctors, nurses or in allied health, considerably more to go and work as locums has actually meant that it is now a pathway for people to choose as a career. I asked why someone would choose to go and hang up their shingle and work for 40 or 50 years as a local GP when they can fly in and fly out and earn considerably more money? The problem with that is that the standard of health is much lower. It doesn't matter how qualified that person is; health is all about relationships. It's all about having a person you know and can trust and having those critical discussions—end-of-life care, aged care and all of those things. I could point to the time when I was a regional health minister and working with the then Rural Health Commissioner, Professor Ruth Stewart. We worked with ACRRM and considerably increased the numbers of training places for the generalist pathway. Part of the problem was that general practitioners were getting trained in specific areas but they didn't have the qualifications to go into a rural region where they may have needed more skills in emergency medicine but also other skills such as in anaesthetics or obstetrics—something that could benefit a broader range of patients. There was a reluctance to go out, but changing the John Flynn program from being a student experience to putting that money into more actual training places in regional areas has significantly given more people that opportunity to train in a regional area. We've also had a generalist training program for allied health so they can actually have a broader range. It makes a difference. When this government came in and changed the rules around distribution priority areas, just so people know, those that live in the peri-urban areas, that week my electorate lost six doctors from the most underprivileged needy communities in western New South Wales. It was done for a reason. That was put in place so doctors who had obligations to meet as part of their qualification to work in Australia would go to certain areas. Six doctors went to less underprivileged areas, peri-urban areas, areas on the coast. That issue itself has been overhanging regional areas. I just want to leave the message to this place that decisions here matter. Everyone thinks they live in the most disadvantaged part of Australia. Even people in the capital cities talk about their need for more doctors. That's fine, but don't take them from western New South Wales, where the need is the greatest. I commend Dr Webster on her motion and understand that regional health is very important.
Royal Far West | Private Members' Business | House debates
I move: That this House: (1) acknowledges that: (a) Royal Far West (RFW) is a national charity dedicated to the health and wellbeing of Australia's country children across more than 200 schools...
I move: That this House: (1) acknowledges that: (a) Royal Far West (RFW) is a national charity dedicated to the health and wellbeing of Australia's country children across more than 200 schools and 364 communities; and (b) RFW is celebrating its centenary of service to Australia in 2024; (2) notes that: (a) in 2019, RFW received funding from the Department of Health and Aged Care to provide services online to schools and preschools under the National Paediatric Telecare Service (NPTS), and that funding finishes in June next year; (b) workforce shortages in regional areas, and a resulting lack of access to services, has seen high demand for NPTS; (c) the NPTS overcomes the tyranny of distance and reduces expenses for families in the midst of a cost of living crisis; and (d) operating across four states, the NPTS has provided support to 20,000 children, parents and educators; and (3) urges the Government to provide ongoing funding to RFW to allow this vital allied health and mental health service to continue to support families in rural, regional and remote Australia. In December this year, next month, Royal Far West will be 100 years old. I can proudly say that its roots are firmly planted in the Parkes electorate. Reverend Drummond, who spent time himself recuperating in Manly all that time ago, thought, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful to bring children from the country to the coast, where they could get medical care and assistance—not only those children but their families as well?' The first lot of children that came in from the country came from places like Brewarrina, Bourke and Cobar. One of the first establishments was an old railway carriage that was repurposed for use as a clinic in Cobar. So Royal Far West has a long and proud history in delivering care to children from remote parts of Australia, largely New South Wales, but it has now expanded into other areas. Originally, as children and families were brought in to their facility at Manly, they had an all-encompassing, all-round service that focused on not only the needs of the child but how the family could assist as well. Clearly, with the growing need and the changes in technology, Royal Far West has now expanded, providing services over a much larger area to a larger number of schools. In 2019, Royal Far West was funded under the previous government, under Minister Hunt—the regional health minister—to expand their services under telecare. We are now seeing a significant number of children. Indeed, last year they supported 21,000 country children. While telecare and technology is not a complete replacement, it's certainly enabling them to reach a larger number of people. I've actually sat in on some of the lessons. A great example of this is Narromine Public School, in my electorate, which has been doing this now for 10 years. There is a coordinator in the school. There is an occupational therapist, a speech therapist or whoever working on screen. What the therapist has is replicated in the school. We've seen, after the initial assessments done of the child, significant contribution. As we know—and my good friend and colleague opposite the member for Macarthur would know—the sooner an intervention can happen with a child the better chance we've got to get them on the straight and narrow. There is a concern, though, that the funding runs out next year, and I met with Royal Far West last week. They are concerned, because they are caught up in the electoral cycle as well. We've got an election coming up. There's uncertainty around that. Will there be a budget? Will there not be a budget? All of those things are concerning them. Now that they've got this up and running, if they had this funding cut, they would have to see a reduction of about 50 per cent in the number of students that they support. Clearly, the purpose for me for bringing this motion to the House is not only to provide to the members and the House itself the importance of the Far West but also to highlight to the government of the day—and also the opposition as well if there's a change of government—the need for certainty around this funding for the Royal Far West. It does a wonderful job. It gets a lot of children in a practical and meaningful way and is making a huge change to what they're doing. Twenty per cent of the children who are under these programs are Indigenous and 50 per cent are under eight years old. That's exactly the time when this intervention wants to be. I recommend the motion to the House and strongly urge the government to look at the funding ongoing.
Inland Rail | Statements by Members | House debates
Last week a press release came out from Minister King and the Prime Minister, acknowledging and taking credit for the completion of the Narrabri to Turrawan upgrade of the railway on the Hunter...
Last week a press release came out from Minister King and the Prime Minister, acknowledging and taking credit for the completion of the Narrabri to Turrawan upgrade of the railway on the Hunter coal line. Great news—except this government didn't put a razoo into it, and the minister has never been anywhere near Narrabri and wouldn't know where Turrawan was. The significance of this project, which was entirely funded and conceived by the previous government, is that it connects the Hunter coal line to the Inland Rail at Narrabri. So now we will have higher capacity trains—grain trains and cotton trains—going from Moree and Narrabri into the port of Newcastle. The government dropping the ball on the Inland Rail project has been nothing short of a scandal. We talk a lot in this place about reducing our emissions, road safety, promoting regional development and cheaper prices on supermarket shelves. There's one project that does all of that, Inland Rail. It has 1,700 kilometres of track from Melbourne to Brisbane, taking trucks off the road, reducing carbon emissions and leading to cheaper freight, and this government has dropped the ball. We need a new government in Canberra, someone that understands the importance of regional Australia, to get this project back on track.
Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | House debates
on indulgence—Mr Speaker, I'd like to start by acknowledging you and the job you're doing, particularly your outreach that you are taking out all over Australia. The five small schools that...
on indulgence—Mr Speaker, I'd like to start by acknowledging you and the job you're doing, particularly your outreach that you are taking out all over Australia. The five small schools that you visited in my electorate were very grateful. It was a two-way conversation. I'm really pleased that you're now much more aware of the finer points of catching wild pigs, and the roles that the dogs do and the various parts of the pig's anatomy that they grab hold of! But I can say, Mr Speaker, that in 17 years in this place I have never been asked to leave under 94(a). Opposition members: There's still time! I don't believe it's because of my behaviour. This is as close as I've ever sat to the Speaker in 17 years. You'd have to have a Speaker with ears like an African elephant to actually hear any interjection from this far back. So, except for the two years I was Deputy Speaker and happened to sit in that chair, it's been fairly uneventful in here for me, apart from misleading the House as a minister during question time. That's a very interesting thing to do! That walk from down there up to the dispatch box, not knowing what you're going to say when you leave down there is a feeling all of its own. And, on my second day as Deputy Speaker, having a motion of no confidence in the chair is also something that I will remember fondly! It is, next week, 17 years since I was elected. It's appropriate that the member for Forrest and the member for Grey are doing these speeches today—three farmers from different parts of the country. The member for Grey's my next-door neighbour. We've got about a 500-kilometre boundary fence between South Australia and New South Wales. Indeed, I've got one of my offices on South Australian time. So we have a lot in common. I'd like to acknowledge that we've got some very special people in the gallery. I'd like to acknowledge my family. I've got my sister Joy and her husband, Jim; and my much older brother, John, and his wife, Kerry. My brother Bob is sitting up in the back row. Two years ago Bob was in the intensive care ward at John Hunter Hospital after being within seconds of death from a very, very severe farm accident, so we're really pleased that Bob's with us. There is someone missing, though—our older sister, Viv. When I got involved in politics, she took to it like a duck to water. She was my strongest supporter in Moree, Gravesend and Warialda, and God help anyone that was critical of the National Party or me, because Viv would track them down, and she took no prisoners. Sadly, we lost Viv to cancer about seven years ago, and her husband, John, lost his long battle with dementia earlier this year. So they've left a big hole in our family, and I wanted to acknowledge them. My children, Claire, Sally and Matt, were young adults just starting out in life when I was elected 17 years ago. Matt's got Anna with him, and, our youngest grandson, Sandy, is sitting up there—there he is—and Claire's son Will, who's managed to wag school today, and Sally's daughter Charlotte, who's just about finished her first year at school. Their husbands, Dan and Bob, had to stay home and look after the other grandchildren and keep the home fires burning. I could speak about the accomplishments of my children, but today's all about me! I wouldn't have enough time to mention—just to say that I'm incredibly proud of the lives that you've built for yourselves. I've got in capital letters 'Robyn'. I do not want to forget Robyn! He's not here today, but for some reason I can remember the member for Moreton's speech 17 years ago. I was going to sledge him, but he's not here, so I can't really do that. But he said, 'Behind every successful man is a very surprised woman.' I remembered that. But it's not really relevant in our case because Robyn's never been behind me; she's always been beside me. I like to coordinate events in our relationship with celebrations, so it kills two birds with one stone. I believe today could be the 44th anniversary of our fifth date, which involved Robyn riding around the header while I was harvesting wheat. Mind you, that level of attention didn't last that long, but, 44 years ago, it was pretty exciting to have a pretty young schoolteacher riding around the paddock with you. But Robyn has been with me—we had fairly separate lives. She was a schoolteacher most of her working life. We decided to do this as a team. For the last 18 years—we spent a year campaigning beforehand—we've travelled together, and in a big year we've probably spent the equivalent of 20 40-hour weeks in the front of a car, Robyn reading the emails and me dictating messages back to the office. With an electorate the size that I've got, you don't have a budget to have staff with you all the time; you just cannot do that. So we've travelled, and we've done that. She's had very sage advice and no issues as to when I've said the wrong or silly thing, because it gets pointed out! Robyn is very well regarded in the Parkes electorate, and, quite frankly, many people would be quite pleased if she was the member. Mind you, things would be a bit tougher if she was! There's only been one incident where we've had a complaint to the Electoral Commission. Peter Bartley is up there; he received that because he was my campaign manager. Robyn and a senior adviser, who's sitting over in the adviser's box and shall remain nameless, were manning the pre-poll at Cobar and got involved in a ruckus with a hippie that had got off the bus from Wilcannia. They forget the basic law of politics: you should never argue with a fool. Anyone that argued with Robyn and that unnamed adviser clearly was a fool because they came off second best. That's the only blemish in her 17-year record. For a long time, pretty well the whole time the coalition was in government, Robyn was the chair of Parliamentary Partners and Teresa Ramsey was the secretary. They ran that very important organisation for a lot of years and provided support to partners of all political persuasions for that time. Indeed, a very exuberant reporter once said the Parliamentary Partners was the most powerful organisation in Canberra; I wouldn't be one to disagree with that! I acknowledge my staff, past and present. There are a lot of them here; a lot of them have travelled over lots of distances, and there are too many to name. They are the true heroes in this. They are the true servants of the people. The reason I've been able to do this job for so long is that with everyone that rang either my electorate office or, when I was a minister, my ministerial office, their issue was treated as the most important issue my staff were dealing with at that time. They gave exemplary service. We've had a lot of people that have come through, and many of them have gone on to other careers and occupations. I'm incredibly grateful to all of you that have come back, and to my current staff as well, for the job you've done. We had a big incident in Dubbo some years ago where a suspicious package happened to turn up. It was seeping. One thing led to another, and the Hazmat team was called and the centre of Dubbo was locked off for a couple of hours—only to find it was two bottles of organic prune juice. The constituent was coming to complain about Australia Post, and things got a bit out of hand. I also acknowledge my National Party supporters and friends who have come from a long way; some have got off headers to come down here. It's a very effective political organisation. I think we've got nearly a thousand members. They're not zealots; they are just good people who want to be involved in the representation of their area. It's not a room of parties. One of my executive in the Parkes electorate has a lineage going back 60,000 years, and another one is a Bangladeshi migrant that's been in Dubbo for 10 years. They come from all occupations and all towns across the electorate. The Parkes electorate council reflects the people we represent. The general public that don't think about these things mightn't realise it but they should be very grateful for the work that these people do in the background, not seeking any public acclaim for the work they do. I think I joined the party 28 years ago, and I think I haven't missed either a Gwydir or a Parkes FEC meeting in that time. I'm grateful because these people from across a big area have become my friends. I'm very grateful that they're here today. And there's not one beneficial billionaire amongst them. If we did have a beneficial billionaire that wanted to join the Parkes FEC, they'd be welcome! But mostly it's just good, hardworking people that are doing their bit for democracy in their area. I'd like to acknowledge my party room and the opportunity that it has given me. For the second time I'm the Chief Nationals Whip. What a lot of people don't know about being the Nationals whip is that one word of command from me and everyone does as they please! But a lot of people don't understand why we have political parties. It's the division of labour. I'll talk about the coalition in a minute because I am a strong coalitionist, but we've got people that have different backgrounds and different skillsets. The job is too big for one person. You need to rely on your colleagues to do some of the work so you're best prepared. Our party room—I've seen it at the best—was only 13 members when I was elected. There was a report written suggesting that we should just fold up the kit, disappear and become members of the Liberal Party. I'm glad we didn't. We have a role for a group of people who only focus on regional Australia. I know we have regional Libs, but we're different in the fact that that's all we are concerned about. And so I thank the Nats party room for their support and I wish them well. I've served under four leaders, and those leaders in different ways have given me different opportunities to work at a different level. The coalition party room—I couldn't believe the first time I sat in there with the people that I'd only ever seen on TV. As a new member, you've got to very quickly say: 'Hang on a minute. I'm not here as an observer. The people that put me here don't want me to come here goggle-eyed and watch on.' As quickly as you can, you've got to know your way around so you can effectively represent those people.' Because of the 'Rudd-slide' when we came in, I ended up being in the shadow ministry before I got sworn in. I was a fairly lowly rank. For those in the gallery, in shearing shed terms, I was the tarboy in the shadow ministry, but it did give me an insight in the early days and a great opportunity. So I'm very proud. I believe in the coalition and I'm proud to have served in it for this time. I'm also a parliamentarian and I believe that, if you want to have a say in this country, you get yourself elected and you sit in here or with our Senate mates over there—and I acknowledge my Senate colleagues behind me. There's no truth in the rumour that I said my retirement plan was to sit in the Senate for two terms! That's being a bit facetious, because the Senate plays a valuable role, and I appreciate very much the work that it does. But, if you want to be running this country, you're sitting here, not up there. A degree in communications at a university does not give you the right to run this country. You've got to sit in here. You've got to use this seat. I'm proud to be in this place. Not many people have got to do it, and I'm pleased that I have. My constituents in Parkes—half of New South Wales. It's an economy underpinned with agriculture and mining, and that's very important. We are seeing probably one of the biggest grain harvests in the history of the electorate being harvested at the moment. There are massive crops out in Western New South Wales, averaging six tonnes to the hectare—unheard of a few years ago. Largely because of the techniques, the efficiency and the professionalism of the farmers, we're now growing crops in places like Walgett, Coonamble and out west of Moree. There are also the miners. We've got coal. We've got silver, lead, zinc, copper and massive reserves of gold but also the new minerals: the cobalt, the lithium, the magnetite, the scandium and the rare earths that will be dug near Dubbo. All these minerals that people are talking about with our new economy, our technology, are in the Parkes electorate. But it's more than miners and farmers; it is all the people who serve those industries. I get very frustrated when we talk about a health crisis in the west. Sure, we need more doctors, nurses and aged-care workers, but don't forget the ones who are out there. You can get good service. Those people—our teachers, all of those people—are out there doing their bit. I say to my staff: 'Our job is to represent the people who aren't thinking about us, who are just going about their daily work.' If I'm doing my job, I'm not on the front page of the paper. You should be largely invisible if you're doing your job properly, because people then are settled. Sometimes your successes with issues become invisible, because if you fix the problem people stop talking about it. And so to innovation. A lot of people wouldn't realise that you could be in one of the top hospitals in Europe or America getting a heart valve inserted, not through open heart surgery but through an artery in your leg, and that biomedical device started its life in a lab in Dubbo. The coalition government put money into developing that lab. Biomedical pieces that are saving lives all over the world are coming out of Dubbo. There's been a lot of talk during the last term of parliament about our Aboriginal people. I believe I represent the second highest Aboriginal population, by percentage, in an electorate of this parliament, after Lingiari. As to the way the Voice in Canberra has been portrayed—and I don't want to be too negative—I just want to remind people that at the local government election in the Parkes electorate we got a mayor, a deputy mayor, a general manager. Most of the councils that have Indigenous populations have Aboriginal councillors on them. You go to our schools and we've got teachers and we've got healthcare workers. We've even got a young bloke from Goodooga who, at 18, went to New Zealand and beat the Kiwis at shearing. The Aboriginal constituents in the Parkes electorate are just people. Sure, we've got some disadvantage, but your DNA doesn't predict your disadvantage. We should be addressing disadvantage at the individual level, not making assumptions about an entire cohort of people from here. I'm not being a pollyanna; we do have some issues at the moment and we need to address these issues of disadvantage. But we need to deal with them at an individual level. In my first speech here I mentioned education. The Clontarf Foundation is in my electorate, and I was actually one of the first people to be involved with Clontarf. I think we've got 11 or 12 academies, maybe 13. In that time there would be more than a thousand young Aboriginal boys who have finished school and gone on to employment. We've got girls academies. We've got SistaSpeak. I was at the senior college graduation in Dubbo a couple of weeks ago. Seventy-seven of the graduating class were Aboriginal students doing year 12. So when we talk here about some of the things that go on, we mustn't forget about our successes, because these young people are really cracking on. I'm incredibly proud of what they've done. The temptation in this job is to point to shiny things as to your worth. That's a pretty good thing to do, but my job hasn't been to go home on weekends with beads and blankets and curry favour with my constituents. I think it's deeper than that. But there are some examples of shiny things that I'm very proud of. The Western Cancer Centre in Dubbo now is world class. It has the only PET scanner west of the range in New South Wales. It's treating people who formerly would not have taken treatment. They would have chosen to die rather than go through the trauma of going to a capital city. They're now getting that treatment in Dubbo, and we've had medical professionals come from all over the country to work there. The Inland Rail—just build it, for God's sake. I'll say this one more time: the Inland Rail is not a train; the Inland Rail is a railway line of 1,700 kilometres from Melbourne to Brisbane. It will give cheaper freight—it will make items on the shelves in those two cities cheaper for those people to buy. It will take trucks off the road. It will lower emissions. But it will mean that western New South Wales through to the Parkes electorate will have the benefit of being connected to every capital city in Australia in the opportunities for our grain farmers and our cotton farmers but also for other businesses to be established on rail. History shows us that, wherever rail is built, prosperity follows. We had a report by Kerry Schott last year. It did not say to halt construction. If I'm not here next time and I don't see a bit of action, I'm going to park at Aussie's every sitting day and harass whoever's in charge of infrastructure, okay? The Australian Opal Centre—it's a big hole at Lightning Ridge that's going to have this magnificent building that's being constructed now. The Baaka Cultural Center at Wilcannia—I chaired the first meeting of what can be quite disparate groups in that town, and they decided that this was going to be a game changer. So, instead of a burnt-out old shop when you cross over the Darling River now, there will be the Baaka Cultural Center, a magnificent building. It will be open by Christmas time. There's the library in Broken Hill—and even smaller ones. I see the former mayor of Gunnedah and the best damn candidate for the next election, Jamie Chaffey, sitting up there. Don't worry folks; he has been doorknocking for eight weeks, and he's allowed to come down here today! We had a road, the Grain Valley Way—it was dangerous, there was a lot of production on it; the school bus and all that. The local government, the federal government, the state government—it's fixed. No-one talks about it now because it's a good road. We talk about pork barrelling in the bush—$10 million to the Bourke council to help with the infrastructure for a small animals abattoir. It's now owned by Thomas Foods. Now, there are 150 people working in that abattoir in a town that had shocking unemployment levels. Not only this; they've brought more workers in. The people that have come with those workers have now opened businesses. There's not an empty shop in the main street of Bourke, because of that. Now tell me if that's not a good investment by the Australian people into a disadvantaged community. They're the shiny things—some of the ones I can point to. But, on some of the things I'm probably most proud of, I just want to premise this by saying I did this as part of a team. We had wonderful ministerial staff. We had public servants. We had our party and our backbench committees. Everyone worked towards these things. But a lot of the things that are achieved here are done without recognition. If you're only seeking recognition, it's not going to go particularly well. The generalist pathway, which is training doctors with more skills to work in rural areas—general practice is still languishing with the number of young doctors wanting to go into it. The generalist pathway, on which I worked with ACRRM and RACGP—we significantly increased the numbers with the rural health commissioner of the time, Associate Professor Stewart—is now oversubscribed. The medical school at Dubbo had over 520 applicants for the 30 places, so we're training local doctors in the area. People don't talk about that now, but it's just happening. The single-employer model, for which I set up five trial sites, where we are getting a better cooperation between the federal government and the state government with funding medical practitioners in small regional areas, has now been taken up by New South Wales as a broader policy. We did the trial work on that. We transitioned the training of doctors from the RTOs to the colleges, ACCRM and RACGP. With these longer term ones, it's difficult. When someone comes to you and says, 'We haven't got a doctor in town,' and you say, 'Don't worry; it's under control, and, in 10 years time, it's all sorted,' that's not the answer people want to hear. But, in an attempt to fix that in the short term, we've made bigger problems. We're now paying doctors who go to work in a town part time as a locum twice the salary of a doctor that wants to go there and hang up their shingle and work full time. So we've created a bigger problem. We're seeing that now in aged care, where we've got agency nurses getting paid more than the local nurses to fill the gaps in aged care. Decisions that are made here make a difference. When the distribution priority area changed straight after the last election—where doctors can now declare Wollongong, Geelong and Newcastle to be regional—western New South Wales lost six doctors from some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country in that week. So decisions here can make a difference. I graduated the rebate for Medicare. I don't know that anybody here even knows that if you're a doctor working in the higher MM areas you get a higher rebate for every patient you see than the ones in the cities. Frankly, when the current government increased Medicare, that increased exponentially, and it has made a huge difference. Trade—that was an amazing thing to do. And I see my trade adviser sitting up there. I was involved in, I think, six rounds of the RCEP, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, negotiations in the ASEAN region, forming a trade relationship with our emerging nations to the north. I represented the country a couple of times at APEC on tourism and trade. I was at the first ministerial meeting of the TPP-11, which was the biggest trade deal done in the history of the world. I was fortunate. I don't know where the trade minister was. Clearly, it was fortuitous that I got sent there. But what people wouldn't realise, when the farmers are going to the silo and looking at the price of barley, is that one of the buyers now is Mexico. They're buying barley to make beer in Mexico because of that agreement that we made. They're not thinking about that. When they're having their big crop and filling up the grain storages that they got off their tax in one year, as a policy to prepare farmers for drought so that they can store their grain and manage it better, they're probably not thinking that that was a decision and a discussion that came out of our party room—or a backbench committee in the first place. But those sorts of decisions are making big changes for people. So going to Tokyo and signing that agreement in a room chaired by Shinzo Abe was a pretty good thing to do for a bloke that had stepped off a tractor to come to parliament. Local government—I was previously a mayor. With my colleague in front of me, the member for Riverina, when he was infrastructure minister, using the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure fund and local government—527 local governments across the country—to deliver that money into those communities during the pandemic quickly, without bureaucracy, was a masterstroke. We should keep doing that. This government has stopped it. I think we did six rounds of LRCI. I wanted to reform federal assistance grants. I was not so successful there, mainly because of the reluctance of some of the larger regional local governments. But, thankfully, the grants commission in Queensland took that on, and now those smaller councils in western Queensland are getting a much fairer cut of the pie because of that change. I was minister for regional communications for a while. The Regional Tech Hub is now helping people with this transition. Communications is no longer a static thing. You can no longer sit at home and expect that the government is going to supply all of your needs. You need to be out there and understanding that it's evolving. Our need for data and communications in the regions is growing exponentially. It's actually growing faster than the way to deliver it. We are seeing innovations—the low-orbiting satellites. I once said rather flippantly that in 10 years time our Telstra towers will just be used at Christmas time to put lights on, because that's evolving. You can drive around Australia now with a thing on your roof and get connectivity in every square inch of the country. That's all changing. I just want to leave with maybe a little bit of a message. I think we've lost our way. As a country we've been very successful, but I think that sometimes we've forgotten some of the basics. When we were in school we learnt the three basic needs of human beings: food, clothing and shelter. I spoke, in my first speech 17 years ago, of my concern that we had lost the ability with the shelter bit, because we'd lost the timber industry out of the Pilliga forest—incidentally it now burns nearly every summer since it's stopped being managed. But the food and clothing bits are important. Since the day I turned up here, emissions reduction has been the undercurrent. It has seen prime ministers come and go, and it has seen governments come and go. I've been called a denier across the chamber; I'm not. But we talk about 2035 and 2050—what about 2100? What about 2200 and 2500? We've got to remember what developed this country. Our forebears cleared land to grow crops. They went out and found mineral resources and developed them, at considerable effort and expense, and we seem to be taking that for granted. So when you take your family to Disneyland and tick the box that you want to offset your carbon emissions and pay a bit more money, and that money goes to plant trees on a productive farm, you are then sending a future generation to have to worry about food security. And if you want to put solar panels all over farmland its the same thing. My electorate was adopting solar before anyone was talking about it. Three-quarters of the houses in Dubbo have got it on their roof. Every farmer in my electorate would be pumping water with a solar array and shearing their sheep with solar, but they don't want to see the whole of the countryside covered up. We've got some environmental champions in this place. I do get into trouble sometimes, but I once did say to a certain member of a certain minor political party—that might sit over there—that my dung beetles had actually done more for the environment than he had. And it's true. These words have consequences, and if we're going to treat regional Australia as a magic pudding, that every time we want to do something we just pink a bit away, and every time you lock up a western New South Wales sheep farm and turn it into a national park or you buy water out of the Murray Darling Basin, then you are subjecting future generations to have to worry about food security. It's not just us. We feed 50 million people outside of Australia, so we've got to keep that in mind. We need to have a more holistic, broader approach to what our future generations need—not this narrow approach at the moment of trying to meet targets on emissions, because it will be a problem. The other thing that I've noticed is we're making our children fearful of their future. Every generation of mankind, humankind, has had issues. Quite frankly I don't think the issues that we're facing today compare to what our forebears did when they dealt with the Depression or the world wars, or even before that. Encouraging our kids to superglue themselves to a railway line is not going to create the future for this country. We need to be telling them that this country will offer them all the opportunities—they need to work hard, they need to study hard, they need to apply themselves, and they can do whatever they want. We shouldn't be making them fearful about their future. I've seen speech, after speech, after speech in this place that have done nothing but scare the life out of our young people, and it's got to stop. I said in my first speech that I have a deep and unshakeable belief in inland Australia; I still believe that today. It holds the keys to the future prosperity of our country. There would be no better place to live in the world than Australia, and no better place in Australia to live than in western New South Wales. It's been an honour and a privilege to serve as the 129th member—I beat Nola by a few—elected to the Australian parliament. It's time to move on, and I thank you very much.
Aged Care Bill 2024, Aged Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to speak on this Aged Care Bill tonight. I understand we have an ageing population in this country. I speak as someone who is a baby boomer, I've got to admit—one of the younger baby...
I rise to speak on this Aged Care Bill tonight. I understand we have an ageing population in this country. I speak as someone who is a baby boomer, I've got to admit—one of the younger baby boomers, but a baby boomer. We are the largest cohort of citizens in Australia, and we, the baby boomers, are rapidly heading to being in higher need. So there's a need for this parliament to work through to improve legislation around aged care and how it's managed. It is incredibly important. I would like to give credit to the government and Minister Wells and the coalition leadership team that agreed to work through this process and make some changes, particularly around regional funding. This issue is way above party politics. This is way above some of the issues that get debated in this place. There is a Senate inquiry happening, and, if it happens to identify issues that need to be fine-tuned or corrected, I'm certainly hopeful that the process is there to do that. Fundamentally, with this large wave of Australian post-war babies that are coming through the system, there will be an enormous burden and pressure on this country—on the cost of funding that and on the workforce. By the time the baby boomers will need peak care, we're going to go from three out of five Australians in the workforce back to two. So not only are we going to have a smaller income coming to the government through income tax; we're also going to have a workforce issue. It's the workforce issue at the moment that is creating some problems in aged care in my electorate, but, before I go on to that, I might just touch on something else. I was regional health minister during the pandemic, and I believe one of the absolute scandals was the way the Australian media portrayed aged care during that time. They made elderly people fearful, so much so that people are only gaining back the confidence to go into that higher level of care. Quite frankly, we've seen people languishing at home, living in less-than-optimum circumstances because of this fear of going into aged care. Clearly, there were deaths in aged care, as in the rest of society, but, to be quite frank, aged care now has moved somewhat in the last 30 years. Originally, a lot of facilities were built as hostel-type accommodation for reasonably active retirees to live in a communal space. Now, with more focus on home delivered aged care, aged care has transformed into basically high-level care and end-of-life care. So the people that are going into these facilities now are going in for a lesser period of time, but they're also going into a space where they need a higher level of care. That people in aged care are actually dying at a higher rate than the rest of Australia is the bleeding obvious, quite frankly, but the scare campaign that went into that was very, very damaging to the industry. Apart from scaring the elderly people, the degeneration to the staff that work in there—these are the salt of the earth, people that care for our elderly people. Years ago, it would have been the responsibility of the family, but, now, with people working in the workplace, we have put the care of our elderly into someone else's hands. Those people are gems. They are dealing with people who are suffering from dementia, that are disorientated, that have become aggressive, that need high-level care. They do it, and in every town I visit I see these wonderful people. And, quite frankly, they were demoralised after the pandemic by the way they were treated by the media and the way aged care was portrayed. It has been difficult to get people to look at going back into that occupation. I acknowledge the government is paying more money for that. But, aside from the money, we need to make sure these people are emotionally rewarded and recognised for the work they do. With the best of intentions, I suspect—and we see this a lot—people who live in larger centres and the city don't understand regional aged care. The member for Riverina mentioned this. The need for registered nurses 24/7—while it's a lofty ambition, I'm sure—has created an enormous issue for aged-care providers in regional Australia. I'll give you an example. Southern Cross Care is the major provider in Broken Hill. I think they care for about 270 people when they're at capacity. They struggle because they're in competition with the Far West Local Health District, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and local medical practices for this very small cohort of people that have skills in that nursing care. So, in an attempt to meet the legislative requirements so they're not in trouble from the department for being noncompliant, they're bringing in agency nurses from the cities, who are paid at a much higher rate, which is blowing out the budget for these places. Worse still, it's impacting the morale of the workforce. Picture a local registered nurse with 30 years experience working side by side with a new graduate, someone without that experience. They could be a good person, but they don't have any experience. They're not committed to the community; they've just flown up from Melbourne, Adelaide or somewhere to work for two weeks. For them to be earning more money than the local person, while they're working side by side, doing the same job, is a circumstance that's got to be fixed. We've seen it with doctors. In an attempt to fix something in the short term—by throwing money at people to go and live and work in these remote places—we've actually created a bigger problem. We've got doctors now who choose being a locum as a career, rather than establishing themselves in a community. Now we're starting to see that with the nurses coming into aged care. That got Southern Cross Care into a degree of financial problems, and I do want to recognise Minister Wells for her personal attention to this and the relief package that we got for Southern Cross Care. Broken Hill is a long way from other communities, and Far West Local Health now, in an attempt to free up their critical care beds, are moving people out, and, with Southern Cross not having the ability to take them, we are seeing people sent to Balranald, which is over 400 kilometres away. And so, as the member for Riverina spoke about, couples who have maybe been together for 60 or 65 years spend their final years apart. I've had family members who have had dementia, and part of the care is the ability for a family member to come in—because the nursing staff don't have that much time—to help feed them lunch, to stand there and hold their hand just for them to have company. There's all of that. So this is a tragedy. I've been working with the Lake Cargelligo All Care group now for 15 years, I reckon, and the Murrumbidgee Local Health District are in the final stages of the plans for expanding the Lake Cargelligo MPS. I believe that those plans are now on the desk of the New South Wales health minister. I'm hoping that we can see that, because I've spoken to a couple of gentlemen in Lake Cargelligo whose wives have passed away—one was in West Wyalong and one was in Condobolin, both of them 110 kilometres away from where they lived. These gentlemen were in their mid-80s, and, at best, they could see their wives one day a week. I'm pleased that Senator Ruston was able to negotiate more money for regional Australia. The irony of all of this is that those towns with the smaller facilities have no other option, but the facilities are more expensive to run, so this is a need. The other thing is that I think we have to have a conversation with the Australian people to make them understand that they're going to have to plan for their old age. Whether they like it or not, they can't just pretend that someone's going to be there. They've got to have a plan because, if they don't have a plan for themselves, they'll end up in someone else's plan and it mightn't be what suits them. I met with the Probus Club in Broken Hill earlier this year, and they were quite upset about the lack of aged-care beds in the town. Basically they were saying, 'We've paid taxes all our lives; the government should look after us in our old age.' Well, the reality is that that's going to change and you are going to have to contribute. If you have an asset you're going to have to contribute in a fair way. This bill has recognised that. It's not an extreme request for more money, but people, particularly younger generations, are going to have to plan. As everyone ages, they are going to have to have a plan so that they know what will happen when they get to a certain point. I've dealt with some tragic cases over the last 17 years when elderly people have not thought about this. Their partner has passed away, or their partner has had a stroke or a dementia diagnosis and all of a sudden they're caring for someone—when they just do not have the capacity to do that and they are without somewhere to go. So you need to know what your options are under various scenarios as you age. Sometimes, as members of parliament, we don't do very well at this conversation. We tend to say to people, 'Look, we'll go to the minister,' and we say we'll do this and do that. But we need to have a conversation with the Australian people so they can understand this legislation in its final form. We have not seen that yet, but the intent of this legislation is to put a framework in place for the next stage of aged care in this country, and everyone in this country needs to be prepared for that. As someone who will be leaving this place after 17 years, when I'll be at the official age of retirement, I know you need to have plans based on two scenarios—you're going to live to be a hundred or you're going to die tomorrow—and you need those plans in place. That is incredibly important. I might finish, in the last minute or so, by talking about the wonderful facilities in my electorate. I spoke about Broken Hill just as an example, but that could be replicated right across my electorate. We've got Cooee Lodge in Gilgandra. We've got Cooinda in Coonabarabran. Both are fantastic facilities. In my home town there's Naroo. I can proudly say that my parents were instrumental in that. My father was the chairman of the committee—he was the local mayor—that got Naroo built in the first place. I go to visit those people, and the people I admired as a young person in Warialda, the community leaders of 40 years ago, are now getting cared for by people they know. When you're in aged care in a place like Warialda, Coonabarabran, Gilgandra, Coonamble—any of those towns—you're being cared for by someone who has a connection to you. You are not just an old person in a bed; you are known, respected and loved. We can't let that go. We've got to make sure we maintain those facilities. We don't talk about this enough. We talk about health care, about education, about child care, but the ability to die in your own town, surrounded by your family and friends, is a basic human need. We can't shuffle people around like a commodity. Hopefully—I've got great faith in this legislation—those things will be addressed. I give support to the concept. I'll make my judgement when I see the final bill, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
Pesticides | Private Members' Business | House debates
I, too, stand here to support the member for Mallee and her motion in this House. I acknowledge that the members opposite, in the Labor Party, are in fierce agreement, but they can't resist the...
I, too, stand here to support the member for Mallee and her motion in this House. I acknowledge that the members opposite, in the Labor Party, are in fierce agreement, but they can't resist the temptation to throw a political spin onto what's a very common sense motion. I speak with practical experience in the use of paraquat. In my previous role as a grain farmer, we would use that in what's known as a double knock. The glyphosate would take out a lot of the weeds. The harder to kill ones would need another application, this time of paraquat, to finish them up. People would go, 'Oh, you're using chemicals.' The reason that at the moment, as we speak, right across western New South Wales we have the biggest wheat crops on record ever harvested is the technique of growing wheat in western New South Wales, and that's using no till, zero till. We're not ploughing or cultivating; we're just preserving the trash from the previous crop on top of the ground. It reflects the light and the heat, and it conserves the moisture. We hear a lot of talk in this place about carbon farming and funky phrases about what's all the go. The farmers in my electorate have been doing this for decades. They pioneered this process. The ABC didn't just play this once. I must be in the car—I think it was last week—driving around my electorate, and I heard the first report on this, with the same gentleman quoted, between six and 6.30 in the morning. Then, it was on between 12 and 1, and it was on the afternoon show, at about four in the afternoon. So three times in the one day they read this. I've got great sympathy for the gentleman they reviewed, who has Parkinson's and who believes the use of this chemical might have led to it. But he also said he was soaked in this chemical. Look, if you soaked yourself every day in petrol, you probably wouldn't be all that healthy, but we're not banning petrol. If mechanics tipped battery acid over their heads while installing batteries into cars, it probably would do them much good either, but we're not banning battery. This is the same. When I used paraquat, I wore rubber gloves and a long-sleeved shirt. It was towed by a tractor with a carbon filtered cab—everything as per the recommendation. If you follow those recommendations, it is a safe chemical to use. It's an essential one. We need to make sure we don't have these knee-jerk reactions from people on the fringes of things that tend to want to do things to make others change what they're doing. There has been a lot of defence for the APVMA and a lot of discussion about their history. I can say the APVMA can lift their act. This is not the only issue that has been bubbling along for some time. For the last 12 months or so, I've been talking with some farmers and suppliers in my electorate about a seed treatment called Victrato. The significant trials of Victrato that have been done by Syngenta with the local firm McGregor Gourlay over five years have shown considerable improvement in yield potential by controlling crown rot. Crown rot is a very, very insidious issue with wheat, which remains largely unknown until the crops mature, and then the yield just falls away. They have been waiting for an outcome from the APVMA, hoping that this year they could use Victrato, but that's not happening. They thought next year, in the 2025 season, but it looks like that has been pushed out because the APVMA are concerned about the lack of efficacy, not about potential environmental impacts. My point is: why not let the market decide whether this chemical works or not? If it won't have any ill effects and it's only about the efficacy, that's an issue that should be dealt with. The APVMA does have an issue of dragging its feet in places where it's not necessary. I'm not saying we take shortcuts. I'm not saying that chemicals shouldn't be properly scrutinised. But there is no need to drag things out unnecessarily when it's affecting the viability and potential profitability of farmers in Australia.
Telecommunications | Statements by Members | House debates
A few weeks ago, a storm hit the 240-kilometre-long Transgrid powerline that connects Broken Hill to Wentworth, to the south. Of the backup generators that were in place, one was being serviced...
A few weeks ago, a storm hit the 240-kilometre-long Transgrid powerline that connects Broken Hill to Wentworth, to the south. Of the backup generators that were in place, one was being serviced and the other one shortly after failed, which caused a huge amount of hardship not only to the people of Broken Hill but also the other communities in the far west. That also affected the telecommunications towers. There's been a massive job to get everything back in order, from Telstra putting generators into those towers to Essential Energy and Transgrid getting generators up and going. It has caused hardship. There's a of wastage. Most people in town, including the coffee shops, lost all the contents of their fridges and freezers. Indeed, someone stole the generator from the pharmacy, so the chilled pharmaceuticals were all ruined. It was a major disaster. I'd like to acknowledge Senator McAllister, who has shown great interest and has been in communication with me about the federal response to this. Just as a comment, though, Broken Hill is surrounded by renewables, including solar and wind, and there's a high level of rooftop solar. But, on this particular occasion, that seemed to work against getting the power back on track, with the surging solar impacting the generators.
Youth Voice in Parliament Week | Constituency Statements | House debates
Today I'm making a speech on behalf of someone else as part of the Raise Our Voice Australia campaign. I'm about to read a speech written by Molly from Dubbo. When I read this speech, everyone in...
Today I'm making a speech on behalf of someone else as part of the Raise Our Voice Australia campaign. I'm about to read a speech written by Molly from Dubbo. When I read this speech, everyone in Dubbo will know who I'm speaking about. The speech reads: Honourable Members of Parliament, I am from the Parkes Electorate, and today I stand before you not just as a survivor, but as an advocate for change. At 18, I've spent over a third of my life fighting osteosarcoma—a rare and deadly cancer that too many young Australians face, yet too few know about. In the next 10 years, I envision a community where sarcoma is no longer the "forgotten cancer", and where every young person diagnosed with this disease has access to the research, treatment and support they need to survive and thrive. But to make this vision a reality, Parliament must act now. Sarcoma kills more teenagers than any other cancer, yet it receives less than 1% of all cancer funding. This is unacceptable. We need dedicated funding for sarcoma research, national awareness campaigns, and the resources to ensure that no family has to face this battle alone. As a member of the Dubbo Youth Council and the 2024 Dubbo Citizen of the Year, I know far too many families who have lost young people to this deadly disease. I've raised funds, shared stories and fought to make a difference—but I need your help to secure the necessary funding to bring hope to these families. Together, we can ensure that in 10 years, sarcoma is no longer a death sentence, but a challenge we have faced and overcome. I won't rest until we do.
Parkes Electorate: Rural Newspapers | Adjournment | House debates
On 1 October a significant event happened in the north-west part of New South Wales, in my electorate: the Narrabri Courieroriginally the North Western Courierchanged hands after 104 years. It...
On 1 October a significant event happened in the north-west part of New South Wales, in my electorate: the Narrabri Courieroriginally the North Western Courierchanged hands after 104 years. It has been in the Dunnet family since 1920, when it was purchased by JS Dunnet. Since then, various members of that family, most recently the third generation, Wanda and Ian Dunnet, have been managing that newspaper. It is an institution not only in Narrabri but in Wee Waa, where they run the Wee Waa News, and more recently in Gunnedah, where they have the Gunnedah Times and the North West Magazine. The Dunnets have shown the importance of having a newspaper that is connected to the community and understands the community, one that does not run an agenda but shares the highs and the lows of the community through the newspaper and deals with contentious issues from time to time. I'm really pleased that Mark and Susie Slack-Smith have purchased the Courier, and I welcome them. I know that the residents of the towns that are serviced by these newspapers are really pleased that Mark and Susie have taken on the ownership and that they will see those papers continue. Over the years there have been some contentious issues that the Courier has not been afraid to be involved in. The first one in my memory would probably be the introduction of irrigated cotton and the change in the landscape in Narrabri and the Namoi Valley, from grazing, largely, to more intensive irrigation. The introduction of the coal seam gas industry in the Pilliga forest is an issue that is still bubbling away. More recent has been the route of the inland rail through Narrabri. The Courier has been instrumental in allowing opinions from all sides of the arguments to be voiced. When the Namoi Valley Independent closed down, Ian and Wanda Dunnet started a new newspaper in Gunnedah, and the Gunnedah Times is now a very solid newspaper servicing that community. I want to touch on that time. During the pandemic, ACM received significant funds from the Commonwealth government to keep their newspapers going and their journalists employed. During that time, ACM closed down the Namoi Valley Independent. They gutted out the Moree Champion. The Dubbo Daily Liberal, which services a community of over 50,000 people, now only has a paper on Saturday, and that has gone largely online. ACM have gone through rural newspapers like a mob of locusts. They've hollowed them out, sold their real estate and left a shell behind. It's so important that we are seeing these newspapers in private hands. In my electorate, we've got newspaper owners like Lucy Peart, who is not only based in Gilgandra but now has newspapers in Narromine, Warren and Nyngan, and Lee O'Connor, who runs the Coonamble Times. These people are committed to their communities. They understand the importance of journalism and are committed to it. I am so disappointed at the actions of ACM. They have treated the people of regional Australia with contempt, and that's unforgivable. I'm looking forward to catching up with country newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists next week in Dubbo for their awards. They need the support. Journalism has been dealt a shocking blow by these corporate takeovers. The Narrabri Courier and others are now in safe hands, and I thank the Dunnets for what they've done in 104 years.
Parkes Electorate: Growing Regions Program | Statements by Members | House debates
Over the term of this government we've seen a cutback in funding going into regional Australia. We've seen the cessation of local government programs for community infrastructure and roads, such...
Over the term of this government we've seen a cutback in funding going into regional Australia. We've seen the cessation of local government programs for community infrastructure and roads, such as Roads of Strategic Importance and the Stronger Communities Program. The Growing Regions Program, which is this government's flagship funding program for regional Australia, is something that my communities have been hanging out for. I acknowledge that, in the last round, five projects in my electorate were funded, and those organisations were grateful to receive that funding. We've got a problem in New South Wales at the moment, though, in that round 2 closes for applications in two days time, on 10 October. Since 13 September, local government has been in caretaker mode, virtually, because of local government elections. We haven't had councils. In some of the 19 councils in the Parkes electorate, we haven't yet got a mayor elected, because of the timeframe and the complexity of counting in local government elections. I'm calling on Minister King to please extend that deadline out by another week or so so that councils that have been caught up in the hiatus of local government elections can get their applications in. (Time expired)
The Prime Minister championed this project back when he was a minister in the Gillard-Rudd government. At the moment there, there's no-one. Neither Minister King nor the Prime Minister have been...
The Prime Minister championed this project back when he was a minister in the Gillard-Rudd government. At the moment there, there's no-one. Neither Minister King nor the Prime Minister have been to that area to explain anything to those communities, farmers and businesses that are having to sell their equipment to make ends meet. Prime Minister, don't send another gormless senator to go to those towns and patronise those people about what's going on. Hop on the jet—there are plenty of places to land at Narromine, Narrabri and Moree—and talk to the people and explain to them what's happened with this project.
Will the one-term member on the other side be quiet for a bit?
Over the years, I've heard magnificent speeches in this place about decentralisation, regional development, lower carbon emissions, cheaper prices in our capital cities, better access to ports...
Over the years, I've heard magnificent speeches in this place about decentralisation, regional development, lower carbon emissions, cheaper prices in our capital cities, better access to ports for farms and miners, lower use of fossil fuel, jobs for Aboriginal people, a lower death toll on the Newell Highway and support for the Australian steel industry. There is one project that does all of those things: the Inland Rail project. But, for the last two years, there has been no activity north of Narromine. The farmers are wondering whether they should be negotiating to sell their land—
Parkes Electorate: Mundi Mundi Bash | Statements by Members | House debates
Last weekend in the far west of New South Wales, in my electorate, there was a three-day music festival, the Mundi Mundi Bash. There were 14,500 people, and 5,000 caravans rolled into town....
Last weekend in the far west of New South Wales, in my electorate, there was a three-day music festival, the Mundi Mundi Bash. There were 14,500 people, and 5,000 caravans rolled into town. Broken Hill and Silverton were absolutely chock-a-block with people. While they were there, they undertook the Mundi Undi run in their underpants. They raised $68,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They also set a new world record, with 7,200 people dressed in blue making a map of Australia. The drone footage looks amazing; it's worth checking that out. They also raised $115,888 for Beyond Blue. This is now becoming an institution packed to capacity. Mundi Mundi Plains is one of the most sensational places in my electorate. From the lookout, looking towards South Australia, you can see the curvature of the earth looking towards Mundi Mundi. It's beautiful. These people not only experienced the beauty of Silverton, Broken Hill and the far west. They also stopped, on their way to and from, at Menindee, Wilcannia and some of the other magnificent communities that are in the Parkes electorate. This has become an institution. People look forward to it, and it's really good that the visitors to the far west are not only contributing to the economy but are also understanding how wonderful it is.
Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise tonight to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, and I'll state from the outset that I am opposed to this bill. I've been listening to the speeches, particularly on the other...
I rise tonight to speak on the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024, and I'll state from the outset that I am opposed to this bill. I've been listening to the speeches, particularly on the other side, and sometimes I think I'm in a high school debating club where you can signal your virtue and talk about wonderful things. The previous speaker, the member for Tangney, talked about high-paid jobs. I'm just wondering how that works when you take an operator off a D10 bulldozer because you've closed down their mine and you give them a bottle of Windex and a soft cloth to wipe the dust off solar panels. How does that actually work? We've heard other members blame the coalition for the Holdens and the rest of the car industry leaving Australia. Would they keep subsidising it? The reason that Ford and Holden left Australia is that they made a product that no-one wanted to buy. We didn't lose the Kingswoods and the Falcons; we lost a large family sedan that was too low slung to go on a country road and too big for the city. A lot of people come to me and complain about the loss of Holden and Ford. When you ask them what they're driving, they say, 'Oh, it's a Hilux,' or something. So the Australian people made the decision about Holden and Ford leaving Australia. Following on from the speeches from the Labor Party, we would probably continue to be subsidising them to make something that they don't really want. The previous member spoke about universities and getting the skills to undertake this new industry that we're going to have in our renewable powerhouse. I'm not sure what university course teaches you how to use a pop riveter, but that's the sort of skill you would need in a factory bolting together solar panels. I'm wondering where this workforce is going to come from. One of the reasons that manufacturing has moved offshore is the scarcity of labour. The industrial relations laws in this country have made it incredibly difficult. With the implementation of the IR agenda of this government now, small business has a huge disincentive to actually increase, because, once they get to 15 employees, they've got to have an on-site union organiser and open access to total strangers carrying the union card to influence their businesses. The member for Reid made a very thoughtful contribution about the wonderful businesses that she's proud of in her electorate, and that's great, but they were done without this policy. That's the point. A lot of the Labor Party have shot themselves in the foot as they are spruiking how innovative their electorates are without this policy, so I'm not quite sure how that would go. There are advantages—or disadvantages—to being in here for a long time. I was here when the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government came in. The day that they announced their climate change policy, Kandos, which was then in my electorate—it's not now; it's in Calare—closed the cement plant. So these innovative renewable projects that we're going to produce here are going to be stuck in the ground with cement that comes on a ship from Asia because the policies we put in place here have made it impossible to be competitive. Here is a history lesson, folks: there are two things that made this country as great as it is. They are our ability to produce more food than we need and our ability to have cheap energy. I represent people that work in both of those sectors, and they are under constant attack day after day after day just to keep doing the things they do to keep this country viable. We have green protesters gluing themselves to the railway line at Newcastle because they are opposed to coal exports. At the same time, my grain and cotton producers can't get their trains to port. They miss the shipping deadline, causing enormous harm. What's worse, the ANZ bank have removed their funding for the Port of Newcastle to show their virtue to their customers and shareholders. It's the biggest exporting terminal that services my electorate, with potential to go into containers and other things. The disconnect we are seeing between people showing their virtue and what's practically possible here is actually mind-blowing. Day after day after day, we talk about being a renewable energy powerhouse. Who in here knows that, for 43 minutes of every day, all the electricity generated in Japan comes from Narrabri? Who knows that? Do you know why? It's because it's low in sulphur and it's low in ash. Through the Healy power stations they're getting emissions similar to gas. But we're going to close that down. We're talking here about lifting Indigenous people out of poverty. Who here knows that 250 Aboriginal people work in that mine at Narrabri and are earning $120,000 or $140,000 a year operating equipment there? They're going to rip that up. Who here knows that the Murray-Darling Basin, the food and fibre bowl of this country, now is under constant attack to remove our productivity so people elsewhere can feel good about themselves because they're protecting the environment? What's the biggest employer of Aboriginal people in my electorate after mining? It's water. So we're taking those jobs out. We'll be buying fruit from China, where there are none of the conditions that we have here. So this virtue signalling without any practical understanding of what it means is a huge issue for us here. The actual powerhouse of our economy is not big business. It's smaller, innovative business. We've seen a few big corporate flyers circulating the halls of parliament with their hi-vis names on their vests, talking about hydrogen and things like that. Well, they're backing off that a bit now, aren't they? Where are the innovative small businesses? A few months ago I was at the Ahrens factory in Gilgandra. They're producing grain silos. There's a lot of talk here about resilience. There is nothing that's going to make the ag sector more resilient than the ability to store grain and sell it when the market suits or store it as fodder for drought. The previous government had, in one year, 100 per cent instant asset write-off for preparation, for grain storage, for water and for infrastructure. There was an absolute boom in manufacturing in regional areas. The Ahrens factory at Gilgandra employs a large number of Indigenous people in highly paid, highly skilled jobs, but they say, 'No, we do away with that policy.' The instant asset write-off meant that farmers could purchase planters made in the member for New England's electorate, up at BOSS Engineering—a magnificent Australian success story. They are the absolute Rolls Royce of farm machinery. They could buy a planter and get that off their tax in one year, but, no, not now. So we talk about ways of reducing our emissions. Inland Rail: one train from Melbourne to Brisbane takes 150 trucks off the road. How much is that saving on our carbon emissions? These factories that we're going to have in our capital cities will be producing all this stuff that's going to be shunted all over the place, so wouldn't it be good if we had an efficient, low-energy way of transporting that around, like Inland Rail? Wouldn't it be really good to have that? 'No, no, no. We're going to put a hold on that for God only knows how long.' God help you if you want to take a photo next to Inland Rail. Next thing you know the Senate is trying to pin you for trespassing. That's the level we've gotten to in this place. Martinus, an Australian company, have developed this track-laying machine that can do a couple of kilometres of track a day. Where is it now? It is sitting collecting dust somewhere because that project has come to a halt. So how about in this country we stick to our knitting? How about we back those that know what they're doing and are doing a good job? We don't subsidise something that we feel is philosophically important. That's the divide in this place now. Are the children of the members from the leafy suburbs or the teal seats going to go and bolt solar panels together, or is it their aspiration to say, 'We've saved the environment because we've subsidised a factory somewhere out in the suburbs where we don't have to look at it, but we really feel good about what we're doing for the environment'? This is a classic example of where Labor just don't get it. My home town used to be a Labor town, with council workers, shearers, railway workers, timber workers and coalminers. All those people have left Labor. We've got copper and we've got gold. You don't think a bit of gold, silver, silicon or glass gets used in some of these solar panels? How are we going to make these things if we don't have the mines to mine them? Where's the energy going to come from to drive these factories? We're producing solar panels to generate energy so we can produce more solar panels, but where's the net gain to the country? What about the 20 million people outside Australia who rely on us to feed them? What's going to happen to them? We've got vegetation laws that are coming in because apparently growing crops is unseemly. The attack on our cattle is next. We've already seen the sheep industry devastated. Like those over there, I am very proud of my electorate for their innovation, their hard work and what they do. Why is it that they have to fight every day for their very existence? So while all this sounds really good—and there was a bit of talk in Dubbo earlier this year about the hydrogen that's going to be produced there by a ship that comes around from Western Australia into Port Kembla and pumps it into the system and produces hydrogen in Dubbo. I'm not sure that I'm going to see that. Why don't we just back what Dubbo does well? The previous government put $10 million into the Bourke Shire Council to put in the infrastructure for a small animals abattoir. My goodness, fancy doing that! Guess what? In Bourke—they're probably about 70 or 80 per cent Indigenous—there are 150 jobs that weren't there five years ago. We're actually supplying food, and that's largely going to Muslim communities all over the world because of their fondness for goatmeat. That is a practical government investment that employs people, provides something that's actually needed and is not virtue signalling so that we can say at the next election: 'We're cooling the climate. We're going to build solar panels in Australia at three times the cost of China and hope someone wants to buy them.' I oppose this bill and I certainly hope that those in the Senate decide to do the same.