Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make a contribution on the important issue of regional development and economic development and make some observations about the policy and the discussion of decentralisation.

Before I do that, I want to make an observation about this: there are twice as many jobless families in regional Australia as there are in Malcolm Turnbull's electorate. The average income gap between somebody who is working in regional Australia and somebody who is working in the inner-city electorate that the Prime Minister represents is $27,000 a year. If you're deriving your income from investments, the average gap between somebody who resides in the Prime Minister's inner-city electorate of Wentworth and somebody who represents regional Australia is about 3½ times. It's 3½ times the investment income if you're living in regional Australia versus in Malcolm Turnbull's electorate.

Now, it's not socialism to point out these stark gaps. It's not socialism to acknowledge that we have a problem with inequality within Australia. It's not socialism, but it is Australian. It is Australian to make these observations. It is Australian to say that the further you get from a capital city, the more you see an increase in inequality, drops in income, fewer opportunities for our children and poorer health outcomes.

Decentralisation and regional development are not ends in themselves. They are nothing more than empty slogans unless we address these issues. The purpose of this inquiry and the purpose of the issues paper is to find answers to some of the problems that I've identified. We've heard a lot of talk about decentralisation over the last few months. I've been a little bit cynical and I've made some comments, perhaps unkind, Deputy Speaker, to the government that you're a part of. I've made the observation that a lot of it is more pub talk than reality. We keenly await the outcomes of the Minister for Regional Development's cabinet process where she has asked that each of the agency heads identify those agencies, parts of agencies or functions which can be transferred to regional Australia. We keenly await the outcome of that analysis.

Labor has a proud history when it comes to decentralisation. It was during the Whitlam government, after all, in November 1973 that the Growth Centres (Financial Assistance) Act 1973 was passed through the House and the Albury-Wodonga Development Act 1973 was passed by the Australian parliament. That initiated probably some of the most successful rounds of decentralisation in this country. What we have been critical of is the piecemeal, ad hoc approach that the Turnbull government is taking to this issue. We can identify one textbook example of how you don't go about it.

I'd like to talk about the APVMA. It was announced during the election campaign that it would move to Armidale. The cost of this move is about $130,000 per employee, about $26 million to the taxpayer. I'm very certain indeed that there would be many people in Armidale who could say, 'If we were given the choice of what to do with that $26 million, we could think of a lot better ways to spend that money.' We understand that the agency is still in disarray because of these haphazard decisions that have been made, which don't appear to be a part of a broader program but are more about a knee-jerk reaction in the midst of an election campaign, more focused on a press release than a policy.

I've insisted that when the committee turns its mind to these decentralisation issues, and particularly decentralisation initiatives of the Commonwealth government, we look at the ons and offs. If a bank came to us as representatives of our electorates and said that it had just established a new call centre in a regional centre and was going to employ 100 people, and that it deserved a pat on the back for doing a great thing for regional Australia, but at the very same time was willy-nilly closing down branches employing over 300 people throughout the rest of regional Australia, we'd be entitled to say to that bank, 'Well, thanks for the call centre, but look at the jobs and the work that you are closing down in other regional areas and the services which have been withdrawn.' If we are going to be critical of the finance industry and the banking sector in particular for giving a little bit with one hand and taking a hell of a lot with the other then we should apply the very same principle to the Commonwealth government, which is willy-nilly attempting to pat itself on the back for the transfer of a small agency, or a part of it, to the Deputy Prime Minister's own electorate while at the same time it has presided over massive job cuts in the Australian Public Service and in regional Australia.

I use the Department of Human Services as an example. I'm very pleased to see the member for Canberra in the chamber at the moment. She is somebody who is keenly focused on this issue. Over 18,000 jobs have been stripped from the Department of Human Services. You could not find a more decentralised agency in the Australian Public Service than the Department of Human Services, because this is the agency that provides services through Medicare, through the Child Support Agency and through Centrelink. We know that hundreds and hundreds of those jobs have been pulled out of regional areas.

I'm very pleased to see the member for Herbert here as well, because she would know and she's advocated very strenuously on this issue. The Australian Taxation Office cut over 200 jobs from the Townsville office. The member for Herbert will jump up and correct me if I'm wrong, but this is an area suffering with unemployment in excess of 10 per cent. And what is the Commonwealth government's response to this? It rips 200 jobs out of the town.

So I simply make this point: in the work of this committee, if decentralisation of Commonwealth government functions is to be such a central focus, we have to look at the ons and offs. If they are transferring functions out of Canberra, that makes sense—where it makes sense and if it makes sense. They can't be running around the regional towns or anywhere else while, at the very same time, ripping jobs out of those agencies, ripping permanent jobs out of the towns and replacing them with labour hire employees or part-time or casual employees at half the head count. So these are the issues that we must focus on.

I'm also very pleased that the member for Dobell is in the House at the moment as well. Being a member from a regional electorate, she knows how important fast, reliable broadband is to business, economic growth and households in those regions. I had the benefit of accompanying her around her electorate a few weeks ago, where we heard stories of businesses who are losing thousands of dollars because of the unreliability of the National Broadband Network. There are constant service dropouts. And it's not just businesses. We visited the Central Coast Steiner school, which is immediately adjacent to a graveyard. The graveyard has access to the National Broadband Network but the school doesn't. That will be very handy for those businesspeople in the afterlife, but it is no good for the people who are trying to get an education! This is the sort of madness we have to focus our attention on as we turn our minds to the sorts of things that are going to make a difference to economic growth and a real program for the decentralisation of opportunity and wealth in this country. These are the things that we have to focus on. As I said in my opening, if we're going to do anything about inequality in this country, we have to firstly acknowledge that it is a problem. It's not socialism to say we have a problem and have to do something about it; it's Australian.

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