Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to be here to talk about the things that this government is doing for regional and rural Australia. I know it's frustrating for those opposite, because regional and rural Australians vote for Labor members. If they didn't, half of us wouldn't be here. I live in regional Australia. I come from a small community—smaller than the community of many of those opposite. I have a family that's working hard in a small business in regional Australia. I am one of the many people that come to this place from farms, from small businesses and from regional communities right across the country. It is an inconvenient truth for those opposite that regional people vote for Labor people. They vote Labor members in.

An opposition member: Shame!

They value Labor policies. I hear the member opposite say, 'Shame!' I'm sure his children with HECS debts are valuing the fact that the Labor Party is here cutting 20 per cent off HECS debts. I'm sure, as a former construction worker, his former apprentices would have appreciated $10,000 incentives on construction trades. I know the many apprentices that we've employed—or my husband or my brother, who were apprentices too—would have valued that extra help in their pockets. That's what we do on this side of the House, because we're not here to govern for a sliver of people. We don't pull out a colour coded spreadsheet and say, 'What value do we get out of giving taxpayer funds to certain electorates in the country?' On this side of the House, we govern for all Australians, we have policies for all Australians and we value the services available for all Australians. Regional Australia is much, much more than roads or bridges or infrastructure. Yes, they are incredibly important. It's not just about a grant program that you can pork-barrel to get things in your electorate. I understand that may have been the lay of the land previously, but it's not how we do it.

Investing in people, investing in skills and training, investing in services and supporting towns and communities when they're going through a really tough time is incredibly important too. So is access to services. For such a long period of time, when those opposite were in government, they didn't value the services that our community wanted. If they did, they wouldn't have cut Medicare; they wouldn't have frozen Medicare rebates. They would have supported more doctors training in our regions, which is exactly what we do on this side of the House. We have made the largest investment in health care in our regions ever. Out of the 87 urgent care clinics our government has already delivered, 31 are in the regions. We're investing in rural medical schools to help ensure that more medical students can train and live in regional and rural communities because we know, and the data tells us, that if they train in a region they'll stay in a region.

There's a $90 million investment to help address healthcare shortages right across our regions. We've got incentives for doctors and nurse practitioners, and we will waive their HECS debts if they come and work in rural and regional Australia. We're supporting prac payments, because we know that it is incredibly important to support people who are training to come and deliver services and get their training in our regions. As I said, we're supporting apprentices with that $10,000 incentive, which is incredibly important.

We've also committed to establishing a $1 billion Building Early Education Fund to build more childcare centres in regional Australia.

I hear the former shadow minister laughing. You were in government for nine long years. You sat on these benches, and you knew there was a childcare shortage, but you did zilch, nothing, zero.

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