Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely. I hear the member for Page talking about the success of her GP Super Clinic in Grafton. The reason for this is that ours opened immediately, not in its permanent home—that had to be built. They set up a temporary home and we were seeing 2,000 patients within a couple of months. The area in which it was placed, around Warnervale, is one where there has been long-term doctor shortages. Doctors' books are closed and people cannot get into doctors. They end up going to Wyong Hospital, the fourth busiest emergency department in New South Wales. This has had a real effect on the community.

During the 2010 election people would come up to me when I was campaigning and say, 'This is something that we think is really worthwhile locally.' They were referring to the GP Super Clinic. For those opposite to continually go on about how inefficient they are and that they are not open, and so forth, belies the fact of their success, and certainly the success of the one there on the Central Coast.

The Mardi to Mangrove pipeline, the most important piece of infrastructure promised on the Central Coast some years ago, has just been completed. This pipeline guaranteed that the Central Coast's water supply was forever safe. We got to a situation where our water supply was down to about 10 per cent. We were running out of water, quite literally. We are an area where it is anticipated that there will be an additional 80,000 residents in the next 15 years. We did not have the water for this. It was the Labor government that stepped up to the plate. It was the Labor government that said: 'This is vital infrastructure that is needed for this community.' We built this pipeline. We have the situation now where the storage dam is close to 50 per cent full. Within five years it will be totally full. That will be the first time ever the dam will have been full since it was built. It is because of the foresight of this government in making sure that they were able to invest in infrastructure.

One of the great things about the Central Coast, at the moment and for the last 20 years, is the University of Newcastle's Central Coast campus at Ourimbah. We are an area that has one of the lowest levels of kids going on to higher education, an area that has over 320,000 people living in it. The University of Newcastle's Central Coast campus at Ourimbah ensures that local kids have an option to go to higher education. It was not this government that build the university, but it was a previous Labor government that built it. It was founded under the Hawke government. Without a Labor government there would be no university.

In the last three years we have spent $40 million on that campus, rebuilding the library, building new nursing education areas and new sports and science exercise areas. And 96 per cent of the students who go to this campus are from the Central Coast. Previously they had to commute up to Newcastle or down to Sydney. It was difficult. Many kids dropped out and many would not even take up the option. We are now seeing much higher levels of kids going on to get tertiary qualifications, because of a Labor investment under a Labor philosophy, which is to invest in education to give as many kids an equal chance of a good life. And, can I say, there has been no greater example of that than, during the global financial crisis, the massive investment in schools—the biggest investment since Federation. In my electorate alone over $100 million has been spent on our schools, and $13 million for trade training centres, which has seen tremendous opportunities for our schools. Many of these schools would never have got the infrastructure that is now there. It always seems to be those areas with lower-socioeconomic issues that miss out, but not under this Labor government, not during the time of the global financial crisis—this was when there was the investment.

Only the other week I was at Wadalba Community School and was able to look in at how this Labor government's Local Solutions program is working. Wyong council was one of the 10 areas around Australia that is benefiting from this. I sat in on a class where there were half a dozen teenage mums, who were there being taught, doing their schooling with their babies being looked after next door in a childcare centre on the school campus. This was a very important solution. These kids were not going to get through high school. They quite simply could not before this program, because they had young kids to look after; but the Local Solutions program aims at making sure in particular that young women get the opportunity in areas like mine to get an education, to go on and have the opportunity to get good employment. This was a terrific example of a pilot program that is working. Our Local Solutions committees are coming up with terrific local solutions to our particular unemployment problems.

I wanted to finish by going back to interest rates and the cost of housing and mortgages.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 18 : 12 to  18 : 21

I would like to finish by talking about the size of mortgages and interest rates. One of the things that governments and oppositions need to look at is what has changed in the last 20 years. Interest rates are now lower than they were when we came to government but interest rates alone are not the measure of how hard people are doing it in terms of paying back their mortgages. We have seen a massive increase in the size of mortgages. Governments need to look at supply side issues and the release of land. We need to make sure that there is more land available. It is the size of mortgages that is making things difficult for families, not just interest rates. This has been a good budget in a series of good budgets that have made Australia a better, safer and more cohesive place than it was before these budgets were handed down. I commend these bills to the House.

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