Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2005-2006 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2005-2006, I want to focus on the Howard government’s neglect of two areas vital to the economic development of our regions—infrastructure and regional universities—and in particular how this neglect is impacting on my electorate of Ballarat. The government does not have a comprehensive plan for addressing Australia’s regional infrastructure needs. Road funding in this country has become a national joke. The government has abrogated responsibility for the national highway network, turning it from a federal responsibility into a patchwork of projects requiring state, federal and private funding. It has continued through this process to politicise road funding and has failed to take up Labor’s suggestion of a national infrastructure advisory council, which would take the politics out of infrastructure funding and introduce cost-benefit analysis into the decision-making process.

In my own district we felt the effects of that when, despite all the evidence, the government had to be brought kicking and screaming to finally agree to fund the Deer Park Bypass. Even then, it has not funded the entirety of the project, extracting a proportion from the state government for what is clearly a national highway project. It was only when the state government agreed to kick in a proportion of the funding for a project that should have been funded by the federal government years ago that we saw any movement on this issue.

Now I see the comeback senator, Senator Michael Ronaldson, has finally had something to say on the Deer Park Bypass. Having been in this place for 11 years and having mentioned Deer Park only once—in his farewell speech—it is plainly hypocritical that he now wants to champion the project at the eleventh hour. This is the man who during the 2004 election campaign called the Western Highway Action Committee, me and all of the residents of Ballarat who were desperate to get this project funded, ‘immature and doing a dummy spit’. Why? Because we dared to criticise the Howard government for committing only a fraction of the funding needed for this project, effectively delaying its start until after the 2007 federal election. To the comeback senator I say: if you are as interested in this project as you feign to be, stop point scoring and work constructively with the state government to get this project up. The project has suffered enough from Liberal Party politics and it should not suffer any more because of you.

The state government should never had to have put in money for this project because it is part of the national highway network. It was a network that, until the federal government rewrote the ground rules, was 100 per cent the responsibility of the Howard government to fund. The state money, as welcome as it was, could have been spent on state road projects in my area that are vitally important. It could have been spent on projects such as improving the Midland Highway—the highway that links the two great regional cities of Geelong and Ballarat. Upgrades to the Midland Highway are urgently needed. But now that the Howard government has moved the goalposts on national highways and required state governments to put some of their road funding into those previously 100 per cent Commonwealth government funded roads and further politicised road funding through AusLink the chances of getting any road projects up has been made that much harder, unless you are in a Liberal Party target seat.

Voters in Australia, especially those living in regional and rural Australia, deserve much better than this. They deserve a federal Labor government, which will base infrastructure spending on rational, impartial, unbiased analysis of needs, not favours for their mates. A Labor government will conduct a national infrastructure audit to establish a comprehensive and effective analysis of needs nationwide. A Labor government will establish a national infrastructure priority list to allow for sensible strategic planning. It will create Infrastructure Australia, a Commonwealth body with the special function of driving infrastructure rebuilding. It will establish the Building Australia Fund, a future fund that could make a positive contribution to our productive capacity. And it will work hard to reduce complex and overlapping regulations between the Commonwealth and the states, producing the capacity to work smoothly together, rather than the undermining and adversarial example set by the Howard government at Deer Park.

For 10 long years, the Howard government has presided over a severe deterioration in the building blocks of our national economy: our key infrastructure assets. It has failed to take advantage of 14 years of continuous economic growth, and has only now belatedly recognised that working with the states in a coordinated action on significant national economic infrastructure is in the national interest. And even now, that coordinated action has been undertaken grudgingly, with point scoring and an eye to the main chance at every step. The Howard government must address the structural impediments in our infrastructure in order to guarantee our ongoing international competitiveness and prosperity. Our regions demand no less. Despite the minimal agreements reached at COAG, there is much more to be done.

On another front, if the Howard government is failing regional communities in meeting transport infrastructure needs, it has absolutely left us for dead when it comes to telecommunications. The Liberal Party and their National Party colleagues sold regional and rural Australia out when they determined that they would sell Telstra. Yesterday in Senate estimates, and widely reported in today’s media, we have seen the failure of the Howard government to deliver adequate rural and regional telecommunications services.

In Senate estimates hearings, Telstra revealed that the so-called local presence plan designed to prevent it from abandoning the country after privatisation did not include one single legally binding commitment for rural and regional Australia. Telstra also admitted that, despite its fault rates in rural and regional Australia being higher than in metropolitan areas, it had scrapped $200 million plans to repair parts of the network. And we have had revelations from a former Howard government minister that the government has failed to honour its 2001 election promise to deliver mobile phone coverage on Australia’s highways.

Not one of the revelations in the Senate estimates hearings comes as a surprise to people living in regional and rural Australia. We already knew that the local presence plan was a farce. We have watched jobs disappear in regional areas as Telstra cuts back on the number of technicians who repair and maintain the network. We have just seen 13 full-time permanent positions go in my electorate in the past month, with more to come. And no amount of spin about casual contract labour call centre jobs being created can hide the fact that Telstra is dropping its country presence to a bare minimum of full-time permanent employees—largely focused on sales and marketing and less focused on maintaining, repairing and expanding the network.

Broadband services in regional and rural areas are woefully inadequate. The government has lauded its HiBIS program and its replacement program as being the solution. The reality is that Telstra should be providing these services anyway; it is its obligation to do so. Telecommunications is a vital part of our ability to function in a modern age, required by every sector. Schools, businesses, families, health providers and emergency services are increasingly reliant on good broadband and reliable technology. The recent bushfires in my own district pointed that out clearly as people desperately had to rely on the internet to try to get access to up-to-date information about bushfires in their area because they had no mobile phone coverage.

But what has now occurred is that Telstra will not provide these services to regional and rural Australians unless the federal and, in some instances, the state government give it money to do so. So much for a commitment to telecommunications services in regional Australia. People living in regional and rural areas did not want Telstra sold. Labor has consistently said that the Howard government should have fixed Telstra, not sold it. But the Liberal Party proceeded with the sale and the lap-dog National Party fell over themselves to follow suit.

Now we see Telstra talking up the 3G, third generation, network, and dumping the CDMA mobile network which cost the taxpayers of Australia some $115 million. I take no satisfaction whatsoever in seeing The Nationals scrambling to express their dislike of this plan. Because no matter what happens to the politicians who may cop the backlash at the 2007 election, the people who actually live and work and go to school in rural and regional Australia will already have paid the price.

The Howard government is also failing our regional universities and the communities that depend on them for economic growth. When we look at regional universities throughout Australia, we see a disturbing trend. Regional universities are almost universally falling behind the sandstone universities as a destination of first choice for school leavers, whether they are from the country or the city, and a decline in mature age student enrolments is set to compound the problem for universities, such as Southern Cross University, that rely heavily on this market.

Perhaps most indicative of the dramatic difference in the Australian culture versus the UK and US cultures of regional university life is shown by the recent first round of university place offers. In 2006, regional universities and regional campuses have been faced with a wholly unpalatable choice. They must decide between lowering their entry scores to fill places or losing funding—a hideous choice indeed.

The University of Ballarat in my district has seen a reduction in demand for places and has been forced to lower entry scores. Central Queensland University has had to hand back 490 government funded places, thereby losing $5 million in funding because it cannot fill them. LaTrobe’s regional campus at Wodonga has lowered scores to 50 to try and fill places in its business, hospitality management and arts degrees. Something very serious is happening to our regional universities, which poses a significant threat not only to the regional university sector but also to the regional economies with which they are inextricably entwined.

There are several contributing factors, and every one of them paints a dire picture for our regional university sector. First is the government’s 25 per cent HECS fee hike. With average household incomes in many regional areas well below those of city areas, there is no doubt that increases in fees have had an impact. With HECS debt blowing out to some $13 billion, even the most optimistic commentator cannot suggest that increases in fees are anything but a major disincentive for young people going to universities. Substantial increases to the cost of living under the Howard government have also contributed.

Students are subject to all the same increases in petrol prices and health care costs and lack of housing affordability as the rest of the population, yet this government has consistently refused to extend rent assistance to students on income support. Worse, the government’s recent abolition of student support services will make it even harder for students to access accommodation, part-time jobs and support services such as child care and medical assistance.

Then there is the impact of years of declining funding for universities. Australia is the only developed country to reduce investment in tertiary education—the only one! This government has overseen an appalling eight per cent cut in funding for tertiary education, compared to the OECD average of a 38 per cent increase since 1995. This decline in funding has been felt hardest in regional universities, which have less financial capacity to absorb cuts or to attract other sources of income.

The government claims that young people are taking up more trade opportunities and that is why there has been a decline in demand at regional universities. But this simply does not hold true when assessed against continuing higher rates of youth unemployment in regional areas. We have labour shortages in many regional areas, while the government has introduced a special class of visa to attract overseas apprentices into Australia. Again, this simply does not hold true when assessed against the continuing higher rates of youth unemployment in regional areas, the labour shortages in many regional areas and the fact that the government has introduced this new visa to attract overseas apprentices into the country.

But perhaps most insidious is that softer demand for university places overall has seen students choose the sandstone institutions at the expense of smaller regional universities. The big question is why? I have no doubt whatsoever that it marks a significant and increasing decline in the standing of our regional universities. There is a kind of snobbery about education that is damaging our regional universities. The logic says, ‘If I’m going to be paying such high fees to gain a university education and I have the score or, for a full fee paying course, the cash to get into Melbourne, Monash or University of Sydney, why would I want a degree from a regional university?’

Clearly regional universities have much to attract students, so where does this distinction come from? Students in the United Kingdom do not recognise this distinction. Oxford and Cambridge are honoured not for their location in a major urban centre but for their centuries of history and educational heritage. In my view, the neglect by former minister Brendan Nelson of regional universities and his promotion of the urban sandstone universities over regional universities has done much to promote this notion that somehow regional universities are second-class institutions. I believe this attitude is in danger of becoming so deeply ingrained that it could, if left unchecked, permanently damage the ability of regional universities to survive, let alone thrive.

Regional universities need much stronger investment, but they also need courses that will attract young people out of cities and into the regions. Deakin’s Geelong campus law school has been a good example, but we need more. The University of Ballarat, alongside La Trobe’s Bendigo campus, is pushing for a medical school, which would be an enormous boost for both regions and should be supported if the government is serious about the value of regional universities.

We also need to be able to attract substantial research funding. Again, former minister Brendan Nelson let regional universities down by pursuing a research quality framework that increases the concentration of research in the sandstone universities and ignores the importance of research at regional universities. It is time for the country’s leading academics in business, economic and medical research to be equally likely to come from a regional university. There is no reason for the sandstone universities to have a monopoly on leading research, but at the moment it is hard for regional universities to keep up, not because of a lack of talent, drive or hard work but because the funding simply is not there to support them.

Clearly, regional universities need to be able to attract the best academic and research staff, competing for staff on an equal footing to the sandstone universities. The University of Ballarat has been embroiled in industrial disputes for much of the past year, and the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda of providing no choice for new staff but to be on individual contracts is being pursued with some vigour.

University towns also need to work on supporting students properly by providing: quality affordable rental housing stock; vibrant entertainment, culture and arts precincts; good broadband access; excellent public study facilities; and a reliable public transport system. Regional economies prosper where there is a thriving university that is fully engaged with the local community. Sadly, the former minister forgot this. The alarm bells are sounding not just for regional universities but for those communities whose economies depend on them.

The policy areas of infrastructure and universities are just two areas where the Howard government is letting Australia’s regions down. In the areas of regional manufacturing and exports, regional health care, regional access to the arts, sports, culture and employment and skills training this government has failed to address the specific needs of regional communities. On coming to office the government closed the department for regional development, scarpered the regional economic development units and castrated the area consultative committees. It has never found a suitable ministerial home for regional development and has left it to become the plaything of the National Party. The much rorted Regional Partnerships program is the closest thing the government has, but it is a program in search of a regional development policy. It is a program out there in the ether, looking for a policy to drive it. It is clear that this government has no regional development policy, no clue as to how to develop one and no plan to grow Australia’s regions. They and the once great Nationals have let Australia’s regions down.

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