Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

Every school is different—particularly small schools, as the member for Blair says. It enables the school community along with the school—so the local community—to get together and come up with the types of projects that they want funded and put forward, very successfully. In the afternoon on Friday, after opening the project in Nimmitabel, I went to Snowy Mountains Grammar School in Jindabyne where we opened their most recent Investing in Our Schools project—which was the refurbishment of an amenities and toilets area so that the girls in that school have good facilities—toilets, showers, change rooms et cetera—which they have now been able to get through this particular program.

Also in education, the $5 billion endowment fund for universities is a great program. Since I was elected to parliament in 1996, several hundred people have been able to do full-time degrees in Eden-Monaro while remaining at home. Many parts of my electorate are a long way from universities. If you lived in Queanbeyan you could access Canberra, obviously, and possibly at a pinch you could from Cooma as well. However, in the coastal part of the electorate it is much more difficult. It was through assistance from the Australian government that the University of Wollongong established access centres in both Batemans Bay and Bega. Last year I was in Bega for the opening of the latest addition, as a result of a $500,000 grant from the Australian government, for expansion of the Bega Education Access Centre. So we now have 200 to 300 people doing full-time degrees in that part of the electorate—people who probably would not have gone to university if we did not that have facility. They may have done the highest level of TAFE they possibly could, but they would have had to leave home to go to university. So it has been a great boost, and the $5 billion endowment fund will provide an even greater boost for universities to expand that sort of facility. With the technology that we have available today, we can take education to the people. We do not have to make people travel to the cities to do tertiary education.

Roads is another great example of how a good budget and good economic management has enabled a lot more to be done in my electorate of Eden-Monaro. Road funding from state governments has been a very poor show, and certainly that is the case through my region. Roads to Recovery has been a wonderful program to assist local councils with much needed funding to upgrade roads, and the strategic regional program that was put in place a year or so ago has also been of great value. Because we have done so well economically, additional funding was able to be made available under that program, and the budget announced that additional funding. A week or two after the budget I was therefore able to announce a number of projects in my electorate for road funding, in particular under that strategic regional program. In particular, in the Tumbarumba shire there is $1.67 million for Tooma Road, and, in the Tumut shire, $2.4 million for the Greenhills Access Road.

They are two projects in the newer part of Eden-Monaro—but also there are two other projects which I have been working on for some time, and with local council for a number of years, in Queanbeyan and Bombala. In Queanbeyan we were able to announce funding of $6 million for the completion of Edwin Land Parkway, which will provide an additional connection between Jerrabomberra and Queanbeyan via Old Cooma Road. That particular project should have been funded years ago. Back in 1995, I think, the Carr state Labor government promised $35 million over five years for a ring road for Queanbeyan. The connection from Edwin Land Parkway would have been part of that. How much have we seen of that $35 million? Not a cent—and that was 1995. So we have certainly realised the things that should be done in this regard and the $6 million will allow completion of Edwin Land Parkway.

The other one involved providing $7.522 million to the Bombala Shire for the Snowy River Way, which is basically going to enable a connection between the coast and the mountains. That is also a project that we have been working on for a long time. Bombala Shire is a very small council and has been putting some of its Roads to Recovery and other funding towards it, bit by bit. It would have taken them a couple of decades at least to complete this. The $7.5 million will now enable that road to be sealed. I drive it quite often. In fact, I think I have driven it about four times in the last month because it is a great connecting road from the Cooma-Jindabyne part of my electorate across to Bombala and then on to the coast. It will be wonderful, particularly in wintertime, to have that road sealed. I have been caught in snow on that road in years gone by. It will be an excellent way for tourists to get from the coast to the mountains, rather than going the long way around via the major highways, as they do now. So it will be a great boost for the area. Those are a couple of examples of wonderful projects for my electorate in the roads area coming out of good economic management and being able to provide funding from the budget.

Water is another huge issue in my electorate, and the community water grants have just been fantastic. Schools like Queanbeyan East Public School, Monaro High School and St Pat’s have got funding in the rounds that we have had so far, as has Bombala High—I opened their recycling project a few weeks ago. They got nearly $50,000 from the community water grants. Braidwood Servicemens Club is also saving water. These projects are saving a million litres of water a year or more, which is terrific. Moruya High is another one. And the list went on and on. It was excellent that in the budget the community water grants have been expanded as well, as has the solar rebate program. I was in Tathra not that long ago for the opening of a solar wind generator on the Tathra Surf Club, which accessed a $4,000 subsidy under our solar rebate. Now it is increasing from $4,000 to $8,000 for residents and $12,000 for community groups and schools. There is a program—local people have been pushing to get community installations like surf clubs, community halls and so on, up and down the coast and in other parts of the electorate, onto solar and now they have a great incentive to do that with the increase in rebate that was announced in the budget.

Yes, we have had good economic management, but it is not for the sake of dry accounting standards. We have done it to improve the lives of all Australians, and certainly they have improved substantially in my electorate. Many people move to my electorate in retirement. We have quite a large retirement population, so the further changes in superannuation—many of which come into force from 1 July—have been particularly well received. As we say in our information advertisements, they are the biggest changes and, as we also say, you have worked hard for it, and Australians have. The superannuation changes have been some of the best received changes and reforms over the last couple of years—very fair.

The government believe in local solutions to local problems as well. Most of our programs can be targeted at that local level. We do not want to be Big Brother, telling people what to do. We want to be working with our local communities, and certainly that is what I have been doing as a result of the many regional programs we have. We have local environmental projects, not laws promulgated from some sort of central bureaucracy. We have local energy efficiency projects, not unfair foreign treaties. We even have local preselections in our area, something that, particularly in my electorate, Labor were obviously afraid to do. They could not have a local preselection; they had to bring somebody in from on high.

Unlike Labor, we have the vision and experience for the future. With respect to my own portfolio, I was pleased for the $40 million-odd over the next few years for the single sign-on project, which is all about helping more people interact with government electronically so we can provide better and better services electronically to the people of Australia. That IT project—being carried out by the Australian Government Information Management Office, part of Finance, which comes under my responsibility as Special Minister of State—is a great one.

The budgets bills and the supplementary additional estimates bills provide us with the means to address the significant changes being faced by Australia. The initiatives contained in the budget will help ensure that Australia continues to prosper, will enable responses to important issues to be faced now and will position us to meet the challenges we will have in the future. They are important pieces of legislation that underpin implementing the government’s activities and initiatives over the next 12 months. I commend the bills to the House.

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