Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Before question time, I was making the point just how divided Australia has become on city-country lines. The Minister for Education may like to understand why there is so much antipathy towards his vote-buying scheme of retiring HECS debt. What the minister needs to understand is that, in Gippsland, it seeks to support in the order of 12,777 people. That's according to the Australian Parliamentary Library. But, in the minister's own seat of Blaxland, it is 25,901 people. Twice as many people in the minister's own seat will benefit from this vote-buying scheme and he wonders why there is a city-country divide in this nation. In the Prime Minister's seat of Grayndler, it's 25,901 people. Again, that's twice the number of people that this vote-buying scheme will support in the electorate of Gippsland.

When you go further, you need to understand that there were also the target seats, those Green target seats that Labor was after. The average across those seats was 32,288 people per electorate that would benefit from this vote-buying scheme, whereas in Nationals-held seats it was 13,384. That's two-and-a-half times the benefit, and you wonder why there is a city-country divide in this nation. I do give the Minister for Education credit: as a vote-buying scheme, it was a ripper and it worked. I do congratulate him for that. Credit where it's due; it worked. This was industrial-scale vote buying. The minister knows it, the Prime Minister knows it and, judging by the silence on the opposite side, they know it as well. They understand that in metropolitan areas the HECS vote-buying scheme disproportionately benefited their seats compared to rural and regional areas. That's the simple fact of the matter.

The contrast on the proposition taken to the people of Gippsland by us at the election to the Australian Labor Party couldn't have been more stark. There is a reason why 55,000 Gippslanders voted for the Nationals and not the Labor Party at this election. It's that the Labor Party simply offered no plan for the future of our region. Our plan which we took to the people of Gippsland to make it an even better place to live, work and visit was focused on opportunities to invest in community infrastructure, things like $5 million for the Krauatungalung Walk project in the township of Lakes Entrance. We put forward a proposition of $2.7 million for the Snowy River trestle bridge. That's also another tourism initiative which will boost the visitor economy, as we are being told constantly by the Victorian Labor government we need to diversify the economy because they have gutted the timber industry. But did we get any support from the Labor Party for those projects? No—not a cent.

So the proposition we took to the people of Gippsland, which was well supported at the election, stood in stark contrast to the proposition that the Labor Party took to the electorate. There was one promise from the Labor Party for Gippsland—$500,000 for the Bairnsdale senior centre. We just heard before question time the member for Dunkley talking about $100 million worth of projects promised for Dunkley. I mentioned the seat of Bendigo, where, once the Labor Party realised that the heat was on, the whips were cracking. It was amazing the amount of money that flowed into Bendigo. The member for McEwen has a wry smile on his face. He was a neighbour who saw the money start flowing into Bendigo the moment the polling data made it obvious to the Labor Party that they were in trouble. And they were in trouble. There was a 10 per cent two-party-preferred swing to the Nationals candidate, Andrew Lethlean, in that seat.

The point I am making is that, on this side of the House, when it comes to rural and regional Australia, we want to see investment in infrastructure, whether it is transport or community facilities, to improve the liveability of those regional communities. It's important. It helps us to attract and retain skilled workers. It helps to boost our visitor economy. When we're trying to diversify our economic base, it's important that we get support from both state and federal governments. The Krauatungalung Walk project, the Snowy River bridge project, the Traralgon Men's Shed, the Stretton Park aged care, the Maffra vehicle collection and Gaskin Park in Churchill are all projects, all local priorities, which were put to us on this side of the House by local governments and local communities because we support localism. We support listening to our local communities on local solutions and bringing them forward for funding at a state and federal level.

It's going to be very hard for my community in the coming three years to have a pipeline of projects when the Albanese government gutted all of the coalition-era regional development programs and then cut its own program as well. The much-vaunted Growing Regions Program of $600 million over three years has no new funding. It ended at the budget. There's no new funding and no pipeline for us to then go and seek funding support for projects in our regional communities. It's going to be a long three years ahead for communities in regional areas like Gippsland, unless the Albanese government changes its approach.

I understand my job well; I've been here for a day or two now. It's to fight for a fair share for the people of Gippsland and across regional Australia and to hold the government to account. Nothing has really changed for most people in rural and regional communities since the election. Nothing has really changed for them. They're still feeling the weight of cost-of-living pressures. They're still seeing an underinvestment in community infrastructure projects in our regional areas. They're still seeing the Albanese government's failure to invest in safer roads at a time when road trauma has increased across regional communities, and they're still seeing a lack of investment in the connectivity which is critical for the social and economic prosperity that we need to grow in our rural and regional areas. I look forward to continuing to work with my people, the great people of Gippsland, as we seek to see improvements in our critical services like health, aged care and child care, because they've failed to keep up with demand in the last five years. I accept that there were many challenges under the previous coalition government and there are many challenges today. But what we're not seeing is an investment to try and address those challenges in partnership with my community.

Even more troubling is that, at a time when we have significant global uncertainty, we have a government which has a very muddled strategic outlook. We have seen a prime minister who has spent a lot of time cosying up to China and alienating our most important ally, the United States of America. These are challenging times, and the Prime Minister needs to understand that he needs to actually respect the United States as well and work in a way to achieve the strategic outcomes Australia is seeking to achieve to keep us safe and prosperous in a challenging world.

As I said, my challenge is to make sure we focus on receiving a fair go for Gippsland. There is no new funding in this current term of the Albanese government, just as there was no new funding in the first term of the Albanese government. It has to change. I challenge the Prime Minister to actually live up to his promise to govern for all Australians. It would be a very nice change for the people who live in rural and regional Australia.

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