Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I begin, may I once again congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your election to the role of Speaker. I rise today to join the debate on the address in reply to the speech given by His Excellency the Governor-General. The electorate of Hume is continually changing. Sometimes this is due to the regular redistributions that require the boundaries to move and, therefore, various towns and villages and their inhabitants to be omitted or included. The demographics of Hume also continue to change with the movement of, first, young people and, then, other job seekers into larger urbanised areas. This affects the emphasis to be placed on different types of services and infrastructure. Then there is the changing nature of business. To be viable, rural properties have had to grow in size and diversify their earnings streams to minimise risk and improve the capital-to-earnings ratios. These are terms that would not even have been used 20 or 50 years ago. Back then, the value of the dollar—or the pound—would have been measured in terms of what it could buy at your local shop. Now, any farmer can tell you the value of an Australian dollar in terms of international exchange rates. Farms have become highly effective international agribusinesses.

One of the things that have not changed is that we all still talk about the weather and measure the amount of rain that falls on our properties. When much of your livelihood and quality of life depends on the weather, despite the best laid plans it can become something of an obsession. This is especially so in Australia, where the vagaries of our weather are so well known and recorded in terms of human suffering, depression, poetry and folklore.

Another thing that has not changed is the tremendous spirit of the people who live in Hume. Take, for example, Scott and Belinda Medway, a farming couple who one day decided to meet the drought head-on and take further financial risk by gambling on their confidence in their ability as excellent businesspeople. They decided to do something positive rather than allow the drought conditions to slowly erode their confidence in being able to survive another bad season. A victim mentality was definitely not part of their survival kit. They opened a cafe restaurant, aptly named the Merino Cafe and Country Bakehouse, in their village of Gunning. Through determination and sheer hard work, the Medways quickly established a popular venue in a historical building in the main street. Their enthusiasm has culminated in the business expanding to include a takeaway outlet in the Old Hume Cafe just down the road and the employment of farming women who also have been hit hard by the effects of the drought. The business sources 98 per cent of all the food and products it uses from local people and outlets, thereby generating income for others in the village and the district. This is a classic example of rural people getting out there and helping themselves and others.

In the process, the Medways are putting the village of Gunning back on the map by attracting visitors who have heard on the bush telegraph about these gutsy rural Aussies who are determined to be successful in what has been a difficult period in their lives. The spirit shown by this couple, who now employ over 20 other local people, augurs well for the future—and they are not the only ones. This is why when I hear people from urban landscapes talking in derogatory terms about the government’s assistance for farmers I wonder just how well they would travel in the same circumstances. If you are on a salary or wages, do you run low as your weekly or fortnightly payday approaches? Just imagine getting paid twice a year. How well could you manage your money? What if, purely because of the weather, the paymaster does not pay you for three months? Could you continue your quality of life? What if the paymaster did not pay you for a year? Forget quality of life—would you even survive? Try no pay for four years!

At the same time, as highlighted by my able colleague the member for Farrer, input costs are rising faster than CPI. Today it costs about $1,000 per acre to sow a crop. For a smallish farm of 200 arable acres, it would cost $200,000. I wonder how many people could find that amount of money three years in a row and watch the crop not even sprout or, worse, sprout and then die before maturity. Yes, rural people have suffered through this long drought but, as demonstrated by the Medways’ positive actions, they are resilient, resourceful people who manage their affairs carefully and efficiently. They are the progenitors of the self-help attitude in Australia, and what they do not need is a Labor government that is determined to cut rural and regional programs. What the ALP must realise is that these are people who will look after themselves as soon as circumstances allow. In the meantime, any resource that is provided to them will be very effectively managed, giving excellent value for each and every dollar of assistance provided. So there is no excuse for reducing the programs that assist rural people in times of difficulty.

These programs of assistance provide a form of job security for farmers, dependent businesses and their employees. They help prevent working families and young workers from leaving for the big smoke because things are becoming just too hard. Goulburn, in the electorate of Hume, one of the larger cities in New South Wales, has experienced an acute water shortage during the prolonged drought, so our community are fully aware of the drought’s impact. In fact, they have experienced the full measure of it. Rural people just adapt to the pressures of water rationing in drought periods, to the extent that they not only understand what a precious resource water is but also appreciate what needs to be done to ensure their limited water supply is used only for life’s bare essentials.

My constituents cut their daily average consumption of water by as much as 60 per cent per household. This level of rigour is commonplace for country people, who willingly step up to the plate when asked to cut back on their water usage. Similar sacrifices are also undertaken by all businesses, including pubs and clubs. So, at least, the climate of self-help in the country is predictable: it does not change.

I hope that this Labor government does not cut the programs that assist rural and regional people through the hard times. However, so far the signs are not good. The Labor government has delayed funding of $65 million needed for critical rail maintenance, demolishing its claims of concern about infrastructure bottlenecks fuelling inflation and damaging our transport efficiency. It seems that working rail lines throughout New South Wales and Victoria will now not be upgraded in 2008 and 2009, as we the coalition in government had planned and fully funded. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation claimed that the funding pushed back from this year and from 2008-09 until 2009-10 related only to the inland rail proposal. This claim was repeated by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in parliament. However, as pointed out by my colleague the shadow minister for infrastructure, transport, regional development and local government, Treasury papers revealed that the $65 million was to be used by the Australian Rail Track Corporation for maintenance and upgrading of a number of existing rail lines which could contribute to a future inland rail corridor. In other words, this Labor government has slashed funding for rail lines which are already operating and allowing farm and mine products to move up and down the eastern states.

At a time when we are emerging from drought in many places, farmers will want to move more food and fibre to market, not less. Constricting trade will drive up prices for consumers and drive up inflation and make us less competitive internationally. We hope Labor realises the mistake it has made here and reinstates the $65 million immediately. Otherwise, this government will stand condemned for letting rail lines run down and breaking election promises about fixing infrastructure bottlenecks.

Then there is Labor’s decision to cut crucial education and training programs for rural Australians, which will worsen the nation’s skills shortages. The Prime Minister apparently believes that skills and staff shortages start and finish in the inner suburbs. Labor plans to cut $98 million from four key training and education programs for rural and regional workers.

The coalition left the Labor government with record workforce participation and historically very low unemployment. This has meant that local communities all over Australia have struggled at times to find the right people to fit into the right jobs. With many communities emerging from a cruel drought and needing skilled workers, now is the wrong time to be cutting programs that provide skills to tens of thousands of rural and regional workers and making it harder for apprentices to survive financially.

Labor has announced four major cuts to education and training that directly affect primary producers and people living in rural and regional areas: FarmBis, the Advancing Agricultural Industries Program, apprenticeship incentives for agriculture and horticulture, and the living away from home allowance for school based apprentices. It is hard to understand why these programs, which have already assisted more than 165,000 farmers as well as fishers, land managers, apprentices, women, young people, Indigenous Australians and small businesses, should face the chop. I chaired the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in the last parliament. There are members in this chamber today who travelled with me throughout Australia taking evidence about skills shortages. We—including you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams—saw the positive outcomes of commitment by rural Australians to these programs. It is shameful and disgraceful that a Labor government has removed funding, which will see these wonderful programs disappear.

An estimated 70,000 workers left country areas during the drought. Many will return and it would help if they came back with better skills and prospects. With the Prime Minister and Treasurer talking about how important it is to tackle skills shortages, Labor’s actions will speak far louder than its words.

One action that the government can take is the duplication of the Barton Highway and the construction of the Murrumbateman bypass. This is a very important piece of infrastructure not just in my electorate of Hume but also in the Labor electorates of Fraser, Canberra and Eden-Monaro. Every year, thousands of tourists drive down the Barton Highway to Canberra, to the coast and to the Snowy Mountains. Our constituents benefit from the millions of dollars they bring to businesses in our respective electorates. I understand that no decision has been made on those works yet. It would be remiss of me if I did not say that the commitment by some members of the former government, particularly ministers for transport, to the priority of people rather than to safety left a lot to be desired. I have said it publicly before and I will say it now: I saw questionable decisions, particularly with regard to the Barton Highway, made on the basis of popularity in marginal seats at the expense of safety in places like the Hume electorate. Prior to the 2007 election, following my criticism of this, finally common sense prevailed. Under the AusLink 2 program, $264 million was finally promised for these works between the 2009-10 and 2013-14 financial years. This promise has not yet been matched by Labor.

In 2006, $20 million was committed for the project, with $3 million to be spent in 2007 for the relevant land purchases and the remaining $17 million to be spent on infrastructure and preconstruction planning during 2008 and 2009. As I understand it, that money is still there and that process is still going on. I hope that is right. I will certainly be talking to the new minister for infrastructure about that particular project to confirm that that is still the case.

There was a lot of hype made by the Labor Party candidate who ran against me in the electorate of Hume. Thankfully, I and my constituents sent him the way that I have sent a number of Labor candidates over the years. It was interesting that he made a lot of criticisms of the lack of funding for this particular highway in the past, and it will be interesting to see whether the Labor Party matches the rhetoric of its candidate and makes the funding available for this much-needed project. To date, I also have heard nothing of the 20 per cent funding to be provided by the New South Wales Labor Party government towards this project. As many parliamentarians and their staff would know because they travel the road between Yass and Canberra, the Barton Highway has a long history of serious and fatal accidents. While not all accidents are actually caused by the road, we should do everything we can to reduce the potential for serious injury and damage when accidents do occur. For the safety of our community, it is imperative that this road be upgraded—and soon.

As one of the few parliamentarians in the coalition who has experienced time in opposition, I am here to say that I will be working with the government to deliver programs that make good sense to the people of Australia, especially the constituents of Hume. I respect the right of an elected government and its ministers to deliver to the Australian people the governance that it said it would deliver. However, it has to respect the fact that I am a member of the coalition and I will vigorously and rigorously pursue it out in the public arena if for purely political reasons it deprives my constituents of their rights as Australians to taxpayer funds—funds that are needed for projects that are essential to the ongoing viability of rural communities, particularly those projects that centre around infrastructure. The current government is talking a lot about this matter but has not yet demonstrated to the community at large that it is going to actually deliver positive infrastructure outcomes to the rural and regional areas of this great country of ours. As I said, I will be watching the government to ensure that it does what needs to be done without fear or favour. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to make a contribution on this address-in-reply motion.

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