Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Wow, what a long 10 minutes that was! The amusing thing about this—it's not a funny subject, but it's almost an amusing dichotomy about what they used to speak about—is that, when we were in government, we, as regional MPs, were criticised by those opposite for 'pork-barrelling' our seats, and they're still saying it. Now, I take issue with the term 'pork-barrelling' because I always used to refer to it as 'being a strong advocate' rather than 'pork-barrelling'. But we were criticised for 'pork-barrelling' our seats. What's the definition of 'pork-barrelling'? Basically, it's getting money that other people don't think you deserve and that you're getting for reasons other than you should. That's an insult to every regional MP who was advocating and got stuff for their regional community.

But it's changed now. No, we're not pork-barrellers anymore. We don't talk about pork-barrelling anymore. Now they're saying that we were all announcement but no action. So we've gone from delivering too much for our communities as pork-barrellers who were getting stuff delivered to our communities that we should have never got—that's what they were saying in opposition. Now that they're in government, they're saying: 'No, you just put out the press releases. There was no delivery.' That is actually a contradictory statement, but I'll just leave that there.

A long time ago—and it hasn't changed—a previous prime minister and a previous leader of the Labor Party basically showed how the Labor Party think. He belled the cat, basically. He said exactly what every Labor MP says. He said that every Nat MP that he spoke to—all they wanted to do was build a road to nowhere. He probably thought that was funny—funny Paul Keating. 'All regional MPs want to do is build roads to nowhere.' They don't go to nowhere. They go to our farms; they go to our homes; they go to our hospitals; and they keep us safe. It's very important. Again, the Labor Party would never understand.

We need regional infrastructure. Do you know why we need regional infrastructure? Those opposite don't want to know about this either. It's because the regions are big exporters of four things; they're the four biggest exports in our country. I'll say them. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer will never say this, but I'm going to tell those opposite right now what the four biggest exports in this country are: coal, gas, iron ore and ag—farmers. Where do they all come from? Where does every single dollar from those four things, which are the biggest exports of this country, come from? From the regions.

Those opposite think the roads we want to build out there are to nowhere. They roads are to help us and our export industries flourish. They'll never say that. I encourage anyone opposite to name those four things: coal, gas, iron ore and agriculture. They're our four biggest exports, funding our lives. All the things you love to spend money on—as we need to as a government—all come from the revenue from those four things. I'll just throw that out there. The regional infrastructure that we need and deserve is very much about that. Why don't they get it? They have a few token regional seats; they're very token. If you look at a map of regional Australia, it's all blue and green. It's blue for the Liberal Party regional MPs and green for the Nat MPs. That's who the regional representatives in this community are.

I want to run through some of the harsh cuts to programs. I won't run through them all, because there are too many. When we talk about cuts to regional Australia, we're talking about cuts to community. One of them they didn't care about is a little one called the Stronger Communities Program. It's a real little program. It's grants of five grand, 10 grand or 15 grand to tennis courts, local sporting clubs and other local community things. These grants were dear to us, as regional MPs, because we're part of our communities. For our communities and our little community groups, that program was really important, and it was gone straightaway. They don't care about that stuff. They don't care about community organisations or things like that. If they did, they would've fought for them. You can nod your head, but you didn't protect it.

Besides infrastructure, another thing this government has done to really hurt regional communities is the pharmacy decision. They don't care; they've got big pharmacies, the big guys, but we have small regional and rural pharmacies that will close because of this decision. The other thing is the distribution priority areas for GPs. We have a critical shortage of GPs in our regions. They changed the rules so that foreign-trained and Commonwealth-scholarship GPs can now work in the cities. They don't understand the regions, and that's why they have no seats in the regions.

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