Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2010-2011 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2010-2011. The appropriation being sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) is $1.359 billion, and the amount sought in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) is just over $1 billion. Critical in all this is that we have a Gillard Labor government that does not understand the cost of living. We have a Gillard Labor government that is addicted to tax and therefore addicted to increasing the cost of living for everyday Australians. The effects of the Gillard government’s increasing taxes will be felt more in regional and rural Australia than in any other part. The impacts of mining taxes, flood taxes and carbon taxes will be significant.

Not only do we have a Prime Minister who does not understand the effects of rising costs of living on the average Australians; we also have a Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government who does not understand the needs of regional Australia. The minister does not live in regional Australia; he lives in the capital city of Melbourne; therefore he can be partially forgiven for that. But his department should be providing briefings to him to give him a full and detailed understanding of the needs and the concerns of regional Australia. On the ABC’s Insiders program, on 3 October, when questioned about what constituted regional Australia, the minister said:

Every part of this country is constituted within their own region, Barrie. We’ve got a regional development Australia infrastructure that is comprised of 55 geographic regions.

…            …            …

When I talk about regionalism … it is saying all regions in the country, the whole 55 of them …

Therefore it is no surprise that this minister considers capital cities as eligible for funds which should and must be targeted for regional Australia. I put a question on notice to the minister about the eligibility for Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund. It took him 90 days to provide a response. I asked the minister whether capital cities will have access to the Regional Infrastructure Fund, and all he could say was that he has not finalised the program guidelines yet, despite Labor having been in government for nearly six months. Minister, if you cannot answer a question about your portfolio, if you cannot rule out capital cities having access to regional funding programs, just what do you do as the minister for regional Australia?

If Labor’s Regional Infrastructure Fund were really about investing in regional Australia, it would have been pretty easy for the minister to rule out capital cities as being eligible for the funds. I have to ask the question, as many people in this House and many people throughout regional Australia have: where will the money from the Regional Infrastructure Fund go? It is no secret that the Gillard Labor government is already taking $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund for Perth airport. Last time I flew to Perth and last time I looked, Perth was the capital of Western Australia. Perth is a capital city, but here it qualifies for $480 million out of the Regional Infrastructure Fund.

In Senate estimates last night Mr Crean’s representative, Senator Sherry, was questioned whether he considered Perth airport to be a part of regional Australia. He said no. Then when he was questioned about the biggest single allocation under the Regional Infrastructure Fund he was lost for an answer. So what we have here is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It is no wonder that our 55 Regional Development Australia committees around the country do not know what is happening either. This is an example of a government baffling more in the community by increasing the bureaucracies and the red tape than delivering real action. This government is not delivering action or results for regional Australia. This government is more about rhetoric and spin than results.

I note that in 2010-11 the government will spend some $15 million on administration costs for the 55 Regional Development Australia committees around Australia. I have travelled around Australia, I have met with the RDAs, I have had some confidential discussions, and there is disillusionment in what is happening. They are not being empowered. They cannot make decisions. They are sent forth to consult with the community but nothing is happening. Our communities, our representatives, the people that work on these RDAs, want to be empowered to make decisions that benefit all Australians. Can you imagine how a community struggling for funds feels when they sit there in regional Australia when dollars are tight, when councils have not got much money, when they are ignored by the state Labor governments, and all of a sudden $480 million of their allocated funding is given to a capital city project? The committees have told me they feel bogged down in holding endless community consultations and producing these wonderful, glossy, motherhood-statement brochures, but they are not able to deliver the results for their community because this government clearly has not found its way. Kevin Rudd was sacked as prime minister because it was felt that the Labor government had lost its way. I have to say that our new Prime Minister, the new Julia or the old Julia, neither of those in that split personality have found their way either. There is a difference between the needs of regional Australia and the needs of the capital cities.

I cite an example of the arrogance and lack of understanding of a government about regional Australia. The youth allowance scheme that was put in by this government meant young people in inner regional areas were being forced to work more hours and for longer before being considered independent. Did we hear the minister for regional Australia stand up for these young people? No, he just toed the government line. Yet this bill was also disappointingly killed off with the support of people who also live in regional and rural areas, and there I am referring to Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott in their respective electorates. I think that their constituents will deal with them because they have failed to represent their regions independently.

Another area of great contention for people in my area and people in regional areas across Australia is the lack of broadband. This government under the leadership of Kevin Rudd going into the 2007 election made much of the need to increase broadband speed. This was despite the coalition having a plan, the OPEL plan, at a cost of less than a billion dollars, which would have rolled out wireless infrastructure all across Australia. Today we have an NBN network which is going to cost tens of billions of dollars and I expect that we will be coming back here to visit appropriation bills where more money will need to be provided because it has blown outside the original budget estimates. But in regional and rural Australia there will be many cities that will not have access to this optical fibre, and these communities will only get wireless broadband.

If you had a plan and if you are representing regional Australia, you would have made sure that if you are only going to get wireless transmission—and if a plan that was already there, the OPEL plan, was going to cost less than $1 billion and would have been completed by the middle of 2009—then you would have continued with that plan and expedited it to deliver results. I fear, the community fears, and people in regional Australia fear, that they will be left until the last when their needs should be considered first and foremost because they suffer the tyranny of distance. In fact, at a doorstop interview on 17 February 2011, the minister for regional Australia was asked, ‘What’s actually being done to improve regional development?’ to which he replied, ‘Look, the key infrastructure agenda for the time is the rollout of the NBN broadband.’ More rhetoric, not results, for regional Australia. In fact, in this parliament on 24 November he said:

… we will deliver better services, particularly to people in regional and remote communities.

How is doing nothing delivering for people in regional and remote communities? How is delaying a program, which was to be delivered by mid-2009 across Australia, doing the right thing by people in regional and remote communities? People will miss out, and I welcome the decision by Telstra to roll out their new 4G network. I think it will be good.

This government could have continued that OPEL project for less than $1 billion while it was developing its NBN program. One billion dollars, as against $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion, probably $70 billion, $80 billion or $90 billion by the time it is rolled out, is but a drop in the ocean. In 2007, the former coalition government announced the OPEL network, which would have delivered 12 megabits per second wireless broadband to nearly 900,000 households across regional and rural Australia. So here we have it: 18 months have passed since that date when it would have been completed in 2009, and still nothing.

I am sure the member for Newcastle must feel totally embarrassed because she campaigned very heavily in a town called Thornton, a very large town, which, through the development processes at the time, put in the twin pair gain wire. It still only has dial-up speed, yet is a major town. And here we are, nearly four years on, and she has delivered absolutely nothing to those people—apart from rhetoric, more rhetoric and excuses. I say to the minister: now is the time for action. Now is not the time to burden people more and more and more with taxes. Now is the time to start to roll out some of these agendas for regional and rural communities.

In April 2008 the Rudd-Gillard government announced it was abandoning the OPEL networks contract. Yet when Labor cancelled the contract they had absolutely no plan in place to deliver broadband for regional and rural Australia. The Labor minister for broadband, Stephen Conroy, said at the time of cancelling the contract:

The Government will … call for comments on policy and funding initiatives to improve access to affordable broadband in remote areas … into the future.

That was a press release by the Senator Conroy on 2 April 2008. So here we have a government that understands the principles of business—

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