Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Wasn't that a terribly long five minutes that we all had to sit through! There are a couple of things I want to pick up on from the previous speaker's comments. Gold was missing off his list of our biggest exports. As a proud gold mining electorate, I wanted to correct his statement. Gold is our fourth biggest export in this country. It outranks wheat. Gold is a critical export, and it is in my electorate that we mine gold. We are a proud regional electorate, like that of the member sitting next to me, the member for Blair. His is a proud regional electorate. And there are other members here in the chamber, who will also speak, who are from proud regional electorates. They appear on the electoral map as red. Regional electorates are not just blue, green or independent. There are lots of red electorates, Labor electorates, in the regions. We have Newcastle, Gilmore, Paterson and Hunter—all regional electorates. Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong are regional electorates. We have Eden-Monaro—the list goes on. It is not right of the coalition and those opposite to say that they are the only regional MPs. They are not.

Another point that those opposite raised that I want to touch on: the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program was put forward by the previous government as a COVID recovery measure. In the first instance, it was for a year. I remember writing to the minister of the day, who's probably going to make a contribution, and saying, 'This should be extended because recovery from COVID will take a few years.' It was funded in the budget papers for four years, and it ended. It ended on their watch, not on our watch. We made an election commitment to an extra year of funding for local roads, and that's what we've done. That is the history of that.

Sports rorts: in my regional electorate, a football club in my area, Kyneton District Soccer Club, did quite well, scoring 96 in the ratings. They thought they were sure to get the funding, but they missed out. It was taken away from them and reallocated. Why? Because, as we now know from the sports rorts, they appeared as a red electorate, not a green electorate or a blue electorate. That's why they lost their funding. That is what happened under those opposite. That is why, with us government, these processes are gone. We've introduced a new way of doing grants to make sure it is fair and transparent.

A couple of other things in infrastructure: those opposite would like to suggest that building roads, buildings and railways is all that matters when it comes to infrastructure. Yes, it is critical, and we have plans on where we're going to prioritise that building, but we are also investing in health infrastructure and education infrastructure. We're building the NBN properly, going back and fixing up all the mistakes of those opposite. Regional Australia is the biggest winner, with Minister Rowland and what is happening in telecommunications and the NBN. We're uncapping Sky Muster, so all those relying upon satellite can now get all the internet data that they require. We're building more fibre to the curb and fibre to the premises. Regional electorates are the big winners—people who have towers. We're boosting the towers so they can get the download and upload speeds that they need. It's not something metro areas need to worry about; they don't have towers, but in regional electorates, like mine, we have a huge network of towers. It is our government that has lifted the download/upload speed so that people can work from home and businesses can thrive. These are some of the big changes that we're introducing, and that is making a real difference.

We're also investing in people. We're making sure that we have the skilled workforce we need in the regions. We are also investing in manufacturing. The National Reconstruction Fund is $15 billion. Manufacturing occurs in the regions. One of the key priority areas is critical minerals. There's not a lot of critical mineral mining that occurs in metro areas. Almost all of that infrastructure funding will come to the regions. There is this weird idea among those in the coalition that it needs to sit in a regional portfolio for it to be regional. Our government approaches it very differently. Every single area prioritises the regions. That's what we're doing.

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