Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to applaud the small communities across my electorate of O'Connor that continue to deliver transformative projects under the Building Better Regions Fund. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government claims she axed the fund because it was a pork-barrelling exercise for the Nationals, but my regional seat of O'Connor is not a Nationals seat, and neither are the regional divisions of Durack and Forrest that border O'Connor. The excellent members for those electorates can no doubt vouch for the fund's role in building their communities, so I'll stick to O'Connor, which has 57 local government areas—the most of any electorate in Australia.

In O'Connor's largest centre, Albany, the fund assisted commemoration of the centenary of the first two convoys of Anzacs, which departed there in November 1914. Albany has a profound connection to the Anzacs, and the centenary was a big deal for both Australia and New Zealand.

Further north, in the Goldfields region, the fund is helping to restore the Niels Hansen Basketball Stadium. The stadium was in very poor condition. It desperately needed an overhaul so Kalgoorlie-Boulder can have courts comparable to the slick city stadiums in Labor's metropolitan heartland.

Minister King thinks Building Better Regions was all about delivering votes for conservative politicians. If that were the case, why would the program have funded a digital education program in Gnowangerup, which has a population of just 1,215; environmental work by the Fitzgerald Biosphere Group in Jerramungup, which has a population of 1,160; and an early learning centre for the children of Mukinbudin, which has a population of 555? There are not a lot of votes in those areas, but the coalition believes that country towns and the shires that surround them deserve the best possible facilities.

There was a time when both sides of the political divide championed equity of access for regional communities. Minister King's axing of the fund shows that equity of access is a withering value on her side of politics. Particularly pernicious is the pulling of round 6 of the fund. The coalition had fully budgeted for this round in May 2021. More than 20 local government authorities and community groups across O'Connor applied by the deadline of 8 December last year. In the lead-up to last night's budget they were told their earnest efforts had been in vain.

This means that, among many other projects, a cultural centre planned by the Southern Aboriginal Corporation remains unfunded. If the centre had been funded, it would have been a centrepiece of commemorating the 2026 bicentenary of Albany's foundation. The bicentenary is important as Albany was the first town where Aboriginal and European people learned to live together on the western side of the continent. Now the clock is ticking, and the bicentenary is fast approaching.

Last night's budget was Labor's first in nine years. It's a shame that pulling the rug from under regional Australia will be the budget's legacy.

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