Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Given that I have not had any answers from the ministers opposite in relation to the impact of this budget on regional and rural Australia, I would like to remind them that this budget will hurt regional Australia through things such as the GP tax, the fuel excise increase, the $80 billion cuts to health and education, the cuts and changes to pensioner concessions, the cuts to the financial assistance grants and, of course, the cuts to public sector jobs. We have already seen ATO closures in regional cities across Australia and that will impact pretty badly on regional areas. There are also the changes to tertiary education. And we have heard from the Rural Doctors Association and the Regional Universities Network about how this budget will impact negatively on regional Australia. I would like to ask some very specific questions now that we are getting to the end of the hour and a half that has been allocated this debate.

Minister, do you agree that they should be a regional impact study done of this budget by your department? If not, why not? Have you asked for study to be done on the impact of this budget on regional Australia? Why wasn't any consultation undertaken with local government prior to the indexation of the freeze on the financial assistance grants? Will the minister explain to small regional and rural councils how they are expected to cope with this change in financial assistance grants and how they are expected to deal with these cuts to their budgets? Lastly, will the minister guarantee that council rates will not increase, given the financial assistance grants cuts that were made in this budget?

See this speech in context