John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak about the appropriation bills following the release of the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook report. Listening to the man who was the Treasurer of Australia for six years, the member for Lilley, Wayne Swan, made it impossible not to reflect momentarily on a few things from our recent and not so recent past. I think it is well known that, historically, Labor governments spend well beyond our means and it is up to coalition governments to fix the books and refocus the way in which we look after infrastructure and those things that contribute to Australia's ability to pay the taxes that are needed. Not only did Labor increase spending they increased it on things that did not return to the taxpayer or the Treasury the money to keep spending. I think history bears that out quite well. The Whitlam government was pretty good at spending and had every intention of borrowing money from overseas—from rather dubious sources, as I recall—which would have put us in far greater debt than we otherwise were. The coalition had to sort that out.

The best Labor government of my memory was probably the Hawke-Keating one, and even that was unable to avoid leaving us a $96 billion debt. I once did some calculations on what the interest of those years added up to. It would have built a lot of infrastructure around Australia. It took us 10 years, just about spot on, to pay that back. As I say, that was probably the best Labor government that I have seen, and even it took 14 years to run up a bill of $96 billion.

The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, on the other hand, ran up a huge debt in a mere six years—actually, it was far less than that because they kind of had a year's grace in which they had about a $60 billion surplus, with a positive budget and what we left in the bank, so to speak. When we came to office, one of the first things we had to do was lift Australia's credit limit above $300 billion. Imagine starting off in the black by about $60 billion and, in a very short space of time, causing our credit limit to have to be lifted above $300 billion. It is a well-known figure now, and that is projected to go to $650 billion. In other words, we are now paying $1 billion a month, or $12 billion a year, in interest and it is actually projected to go to three times that. I look at our coalition. We have to be far more pragmatic about the way we sit down with those members of the Senate who are not Labor and not Greens and get the bills through that will allow that to happen. What we have done has certainly had an enormous effect, far more than anyone on the side of the chamber on which I, unfortunately, sit—we have been too successful at the ballot box—would like to concede.

I want to talk for a minute about some things that we have done and are doing for the nation, but first I want to touch on how some of those things are working for the electorate of Calare—which I repeat, as I quite often do, is the oldest part of Australia. It is what they first discovered after European settlement. Outside the Sydney Basin, we are the oldest part of regional Australia as far as modern times are concerned. It is where agriculture and mining first got going in a serious sense. The first thing I want to talk about is the $50 billion infrastructure program, which prior to the last election we said we would introduce and which we are doing, including at Forty Bends, which, strangely enough, is just about where Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson got to 200 years ago in May 1813, when they crossed the mountains. Forty Bends is an example of what that infrastructure program is doing. We turned the sod, or started the bulldozers, for works on a $96 million safety package upgrade for the Great Western Highway on the Sydney side of Lithgow. That is part of a $250 million investment in safety upgrades between Katoomba and Lithgow, probably the most dangerous part of the Great Western Highway. It is high time that this was done and we are only able to do it because of that program. It is an area that has had fatalities and more than 30 accidents in the past few years. It is high time it was done, and it was relief to be able to visit there with the member for Bathurst, Paul Toole, and the mayor, Marie Statham, to kick that off. We have made an election commitment, which we are fulfilling, to provide safety upgrades at this notoriously dangerous stretch of road. We are delivering. We are upgrading the existing two- and thee-lane undivided road to a three-lane divided highway. These are the sorts of things we would like to do everywhere, and we have to get the books in order to be able to continue to do them.

Locally, Calare is benefiting hugely from the change of government and the fact that we know that Australia very much needs us to get those books in order. The Business Enterprise Centre for Cabonne, Orange and Blayney recently received $660,000 as part of the small business advisory service from last year's round. It is a vital program. They do a very good job. They help small businesses improve and grow their business. They show them how to look at their work from a more business oriented point of view, how to join the digital economy, as it were, how use IT in a modern way, how to improve their managerial skills and how to improve their relationships and include their staff in what they do. It is a great program and that particular BEC does a great job. Cabonne Council received nearly $1 million to fix a notoriously bad bridge from the Bridges Renewal Program. From the heavy vehicle safety program, Calare received nearly $3 million recently.

I mentioned earlier that we are the oldest part of regional Australia in European times. I am very happy to say that, in May this year, Bathurst will celebrate 200 years since Governor Macquarie stood there on the banks of the Macquarie and made it into an actual town. It is the oldest city in Australia outside of Sydney and Hobart. I might have to throw Parramatta in there as well, but it is older than Brisbane, I can assure you. It is older than Melbourne, older than Perth and older than Adelaide. However, we do not want to get anyone stirred up about all that. The point is that, for regional Australia, its 200th anniversary is a very big deal, and we are all delighted that the Commonwealth was able to contribute to making sure that that is a wonderful time and that it will be a longstanding memorial to regional Australia on the banks of the Macquarie.

Regarding the NBN, the previous government dreamt this up. I am sure they watched The Hollowmen too often and one day thought, 'That's a great idea.' I remember the episode where they had this wonderful idea—they were going to spend $100 billion, but they never actually worked out what it was going to be spent on. I think that is where the previous government got NBN idea in its original format from. We had to come into government and make it affordable and doable and, from regional Australia's point of view, make it happen—because regional Australia and certainly Calare were not actually on the map to be in it.

I can proudly say that Calare would probably have more fixed-wireless towers than any electorate in New South Wales, though I cannot speak for Queensland. We have suddenly refocused this program and made it relevant to those people with the worst receptions, and that is where we have put the dollars. Dubbo, which is obviously in the electorate of Parkes—the electorate of my colleague Mr Coulton—Orange and Bathurst are all going to be on fixed-line over the next two or three years, as indeed they need to be. We have concentrated on those areas with the worst reception. As I said, we were not even on the map as far as the rollout of the NBN until this government got into office.

It is not just locally that the coalition is making things work. Getting rid of the carbon tax and the mining tax was big for Australia but it was even bigger for regional Australia. What I think most people overlook is that those of us who live away from the coast and away from the capital cities actually use far more power in a household and living sense, because we live in areas with such bigger varieties of temperature. We get colder and we get hotter, and we need more energy to both cool and make life liveable. It is the same for our small businesses. It costs them more to ensure that their staff and the people who work with them can do so while giving it their all. So getting rid of the carbon tax was a very big thing for regional Australia. It was worth far more to them than the $540 it was believed it was worth per family nationally.

While mining might be the biggest export for Australia, it is a very, very big activity in regional Australia. It is where the people are who actually do it; so it is an even bigger thing for regional Australia than for Australia nationally. We had to restore the confidence of foreign companies, because there is nothing as global as mining in the world today—perhaps the arms race might be. Let me tell you, mining is extraordinarily global and we cannot shut ourselves out of it. We have to send the right signals to those who would partner with us. In my electorate I have mining that is owned by Malaysians, Chinese and Australians, and we are very thankful that they want to invest in us.

Nationally, I think the most popular program of any government has been Roads to Recovery. I remember it well. I think it was 1996 when it was first launched or it might have been 1997. It was so popular that Labor were not even game to change its name, as much as they wanted to, because it was recognised for what it was and appreciated so well. There is $2.1 billion for that program and a further $565 million to fix troublesome black spot areas, including some in my own electorate and around Australia. I chair the New South Wales Black Spot Consultative Panel. In the last few years funding for black spots has gone from $20 million to $51 million per year over the next two years, and obviously that makes a heck of a difference.

I am extraordinarily passionate about agriculture. I have to say that I do not think anything that has happened in recent times has ensured the wellbeing and the future of agriculture. Whether it be in the north of Queensland, in western New South Wales or in Western Australia, we must ensure over the next year or so that our companies and our farmers take advantage of the free trade deals that have been done recently with Korea, Japan and China and the free trade deal with the USA that we did last time we were in government.

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