Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it amazing that the Labor Party are just so openly hostile in their opposition to the concept of decentralisation. We have a whole raft of experiences and a whole raft of examples of where decentralisation has in fact worked at both the state and the federal level. It seems to be an opportunity for all of Australia—not just Canberra, not just Sydney, not just Melbourne—to share in the wealth created by the taxpayers. This is an opportunity for everybody to share partially in the wealth generated by the Public Service—well-educated, hardworking, smart people working and living in every area around Australia, not just having them condensed into one or two or three very high-socioeconomic social areas such as CBDs of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

It is amazing when it is put to the Australian people that we are spending $4½ billion to subsidise public transport in Melbourne and Sydney. No-one raises an eyebrow at that—just our everyday subsidisation of the fare box that happens around Australia in our major regional cities and our major metropolitan areas. There is this enormous subsidisation. No-one cares about that, but the second we start talking about putting some real wealth into the regions, everyone starts talking about pork barrelling. This is quite staggering. We have the situation in which, in the ACT, they are calling for a $100 million-odd light rail system that is going to operate in and around Canberra. And that is not going to pay for itself; it will need to be subsidised by taxpayers so that it operates just like every other metropolitan train service or tram service. It has to be subsidised so that it actually works.

But from the Labor Party there seems to be one rule for everybody else and another rule for the regions. So, the cities can take and use whatever they wish but, when it comes to asking for a fair share for the regions or for country Australia, all of a sudden the Labor Party puts up the shutters and calls for the absolute abolition of any of those sorts of funds going out to the regions. It is staggering, decisions being made by bureaucrats and public servants that have a real impact—and not on Canberra, not on Sydney, not on Melbourne, not on the major metropolitan areas. When the decisions of the bureaucrats and the decisions of the departments have a true impact on the regions, it is staggering to think that the Labor Party will oppose the idea that some of those bureaucrats should in fact live in the regions, that they should be able to sample the consequences of their decisions each and every day because they are living through it.

This was one of the great arguments for further decentralisation of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, where the decisions that are being made here in Canberra are impacting on all of the towns, communities and cities along the Murray-Darling Basin. Those decisions are having an impact on everybody's lives every day of the year. Yet we have in this chamber a shadow minister for water who continually wants to push the water away from productive agriculture and towards environmental purposes. That balance has been totally tilted askew and we are going to get to the situation where damage is going to be done. These sorts of decisions are seen to be made on a distant planet, and whatever decisions the bureaucrats in Canberra make on various other regions around Australia seem to not be of any real concern to those people. Through a decentralisation policy, we might find that those people live and breathe the consequences of their decisions—and you can replicate this example across other areas.

But when we think about decentralisation we should not just be thinking about decentralising departments and portfolios that actually pertain to rural and regional Australia. There is no reason that you could not do more along the lines of the Australian Taxation Office, which was decentralised many, many years ago to the Albury-Wodonga region. That is seen to have been very positive and very successful—as with the case of the State Revenue office move to Ballarat and on and on it goes. They are great examples. We should follow this lead. (Time expired)

See this speech in context