Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to talking to this matter of public importance. What I'm going to point out today, which is quite obvious when you look at electoral results from the last election, is the dichotomy between city and country Australia. I acknowledge the result opposite, the result of the Labor Party at the last election and the increased number of seats that they obtained. It's quite obvious they picked up a lot of seats, the majority of them in city Australia. They did very well in that sense, but it's very interesting to observe that that was on a very low primary vote. The primary vote for the Labor Party at the last federal election was 34 per cent and for the coalition parties it was 31 per cent, so there was not a big difference in primary vote, but they did very well with preferencing.

I highlight to them that I think this large majority is very much built on a house of cards. As I said, there's been a dichotomy between the city and the country. I am going to give a bit of a shout-out later to some of my Nationals country MPs who are new members, but I point out to my colleagues in the Liberal Party how well the regional Liberal Party did as well, with their members and the number of new members—the member for Monash, the member for Grey and the member for Forrest as well. There are many more.

I want to highlight that, if you'd said to the Labor Party in 2007, 'You're going to win a bigger majority in 2025; write down the seats that you're going to have in 2025 with as large a majority as you got in 2007,' there would be six seats—or friendly teal-type Independents—that the Labor Party would write down on that list. They are the seats of Flynn, Dawson and Capricornia; my own seat of Page; and the seats of Lyne and New England that were held by teal-type Independents. They would write them down, because that's what happened in 2007. In the National Party in 2007 we had under 10 House of Reps seats, and over the next two elections, in 2010 and 2013, we won back all of those six seats that I just mentioned. The interesting thing is, as with the Liberal Party when they've won between seven and 30 seats in the country, especially in regional areas, we haven't lost any of those six seats. I don't say that with any hubris and I don't say that with any arrogance. I'm just saying that it's an interesting dichotomy—the differences in the city and regional Australia right now—and I think there are some real reasons for that.

I also want to acknowledge that we've seen a great assault from the teals on some city seats and seen them have success in the city. I acknowledge my friend and colleague in Cowper who had a huge assault from a teal Independent. It was roughly $1½ billion, probably more, from the teal Independent there, and my colleague got a swing to him in that seat. I also acknowledge we had a great candidate in Bendigo. We got a swing of nearly 10 per cent to that candidate for us in Bendigo, giving the member for Bendigo a great fright. It's interesting. I don't say it with any hubris; I just say it as a factual electoral result.

I want to give a shout-out, before I go on, to three new MPs in this House. The first one, a good friend of mine, is Alison Penfold, the new member for Lyne. Alison's had a really tough introduction to this place. Within days of her becoming member-elect—not even the sworn-in member, not even declared through the Australian Electoral Commission—her electorate had a natural disaster of great proportion. I went down to see her about a week later, after the water had receded, and she was doing it tough. Her community was doing it tough, and I want to give her a shout-out. She emotionally connected to them, advocated for them and was in the mud with them from day one, and I have great respect for her advocacy and her emotional connection to her community. She was under great duress not only because of the disaster it was but because she had no office support given she was only the member-elect.

I want to give a shout-out, too, to David Batt, the new member for Hinkler. He was a late starter for this; the previous member retired. I went up and spent a day pre-polling with David. I was there for about five minutes and knew he was going to win with the reception that he was getting during pre-polling. Handing out flyers for him was a great joy because it was very easy. He has come into this place, and when he talks about his community—there's a percentage of retirees in the seat of Hinkler—he tells me he has pensioners in his electorate that are turning the fridge off at night because they can't afford their energy bills with the increases that havehappened there in the past three years. He's got a big fight, and he's here to have that fight for them.

The last one is the new member for Parkes—the boilermaker from the bush! I've spent a few days with him in his electorate. He travelled 36,000 kilometres—if you look at the size of his electorate, that's not hard to do—and doorknocked 24,000 homes. He had some interesting experiences. There was a staffy dog in Dubbo that had him jumping over a fence, and in Broken Hill there was a goat that chased him out of the gate as well. He's more nimble and more fleet of foot since he's been a candidate as well. I give them a big shout-out because of the great regional MPs they will be.

We know, on this side, that regional Australia is the economic powerhouse of this nation. It's great to see some new members opposite—well, it's not great to see that you won your seats, necessarily, but it's great to see that you're here. I'll tell you if you don't know—you may well know this, and I humbly apologise if you already know this—regional Australia is the economic powerhouse of this nation. We export about $650 billion worth of stuff overseas every year. Over two-thirds of that is from the bush, from regional Australia. Those exports include coal, which we're not ashamed of; iron ore; gas; and food. Regional Australia is the economic powerhouse of this nation. We're proud of that. We're here to advocate very strongly for it.

There are some things this government has done in the previous parliament which are why I think the results are very different in the bush from the cities. They cut infrastructure spending straightaway. The Roads of Strategic Importance program, the Building Better Regions Fund, the LRCI program and the Stronger Communities Program were all dumped. We had great disappointment in my room—and, I know, in those of some of my Liberal colleagues—when the minister for the environment took water out of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and took money out of our communities, who are growing food to feed us and to feed the rest of the world. She took water out of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which was a great disappointment.

They took away our doctors. I mean, seriously? You have doctor ratios in some of the city suburbs of one doctor to every 500 or 600 people. There are communities in the bush that have one doctor for every 5,000 or 6,000 people. There was a program we had called the distribution priority area and, if you were foreign trained or had a Commonwealth scholarship, you had to do times in areas that were more remote. They abolished it almost straightaway. We lost doctors overnight. You can literally live in Rose Bay and have a practice in Hornsby and qualify now under the distribution priority area classification. Our people know this. The government bans industries. They ban things that we do in the bush. They banned live exports, which was devastating to some of the communities in our patch as well.

There are lots of other things, too, that are a great shame. Some of our state Labor colleagues are at fault for this. We now import more fish into Australia than we fish ourselves. We're surrounded by a coastline. Again, it's because of the environmental policy of those opposite who think fishing is bad. I know that the member for Gippsland is passionate about hardwood timber. We do forestry very sustainably, but, under the Victorian state government, for example, you can't do it at all now. So we are now importing hardwood from overseas. Our communities know this because they work in these environments, they work in these industries and they see that those opposite are sanctimonious. It's a sanctimony.

There's also a little bit of hypocrisy. With the renewable energy rollout, where's all that happening? It's all happening in the regions. I have an example that I've mentioned in this chamber before. The member for Warringah had a proposal from a climate change group in Warringah to put a hectare of solar panels and six wind turbines on North Head. I said, 'Good on them!' They wanted to walk their talk. The member, when approached by the local newspaper, said it wouldn't be environmentally or culturally—the area's too sensitive for that.

An honourable member: Oh, really?

Really. Then, when we say we have issues with the rollout in our communities, she has the hide to say that we're scaremongering. This is the sanctimony and the hypocrisy that we hear from this government, the teal crossbenchers and the Greens crossbenchers. Our voters and our communities in regional Australia get it. They know that's what's happening. There is this big dichotomy. Regional Australians have worked this lot out. They know that the government are not on their side. They know that the government don't support what we do and don't like some of the things that we export. Regional Australians have worked out this Labor government.

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