Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take the interjection, but we are being kind here today. My view is and has been—and I have stated it and you can read it in Hansardthat regional development is not possible without economic development, and regional development is not possible without social development. We are not asking the community infrastructure program to provide police stations and hospitals. Those things are done by departments, or state governments in both of those cases. These kinds of community assets are developed and provided by departments with expertise in that area, and it should be the same with the development of business programs.

I visited Bundaberg, the member for Hinkler’s headquarters, and went to three businesses that had received funding from the Regional Partnerships program, one of which had received one bunch of funding and then did not get the next. First of all there was a business that had relocated from Nambour with the assistance of that program to set up a business packaging cane mulch and selling it through various places like Bunnings Warehouse. I think they received $1 million from the Regional Partnerships program. The banks would not look at funding this business until they got the government money, yet this is the same business that, in the course of this season, put $2 million into the pockets of cane farmers in that area by buying the trash off their properties. If that is not a decent business plan well supportable by banks I do not know what is, yet the banks hang out to get that Australian government $1 million so that, if their assessment is wrong and things go bad, there is $1 million of government money that they already have to help them recover their losses. The second business I went to was the food processor, and I agree with the member for Hinkler that it is a business worthy of government support.

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