Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It has been highly entertaining, listening to the minister—my counterpart, in point of fact. I first want to address how this government is devastating regional communities—effectively, abandoning regional communities.

I particularly want to point out that the minister's statement regarding the lowering of default speed limits is actually not accurate. I have in front of me the department of infrastructure consultation that we are referring to, which clearly says that—as to this consultation on potentially lowering the default speed limit on sealed and unsealed regional roads which are unmarked—one of the benefits is to reduce fatalities. Nobody is going to dispute that we all want to see fatalities reduced. Also it's to reduce fuel consumption costs. I didn't know they cared! And, thirdly, it's so that emissions from fuel consumption will be lower. Now, seriously! I've heard them say, 'This is not a climate change issue at all.' I'm sorry—as I have said several times this week, this has the Minister for Climate Change and Energy's fingerprints all over it.

What this consultation actually shows is that the cost to those who live in the regions is going to be about slower travel time. Really? Is that actually accurate? Yes. Parents will take longer to get their kids to school. Parents will take longer to get their kids to sport. Parents will take longer to take their children to the doctor. This is the cost of this ridiculous notion.

Now, I have spoken to the member for Riverina about this very consultation, which, I would like to clearly say, we did not implement, because it is so foolish. I will be very interested to see what the consultation paper—and we called for it to be extended, because it was brought out under the cover of darkness; nobody knew that this consultation was taking place until this last week.

It is an incredibly ridiculous notion—to make people in the regions just simply drive slower, rather than expending money on roads. On that point, I would speak to the minister again, although she has left the chamber, and say that, while Labor continually say that they have doubled the dollars to Roads to Recovery, the fact of the matter is that it hasn't happened yet. Like everything, we have a great announcement, but where's the follow-through? The money has not happened. The roads are still broken. And everybody in regional Australia knows it. In terms of how this government has betrayed those who live in the regions, I have to talk about the 3G shutdown. What a debacle! Twelve months ago, on this government's watch, the 3G shutdown occurred. Telstra, Optus, TPG—everybody was involved, but the minister approved the shutdown. The problem was that the promise was made that there would be no harm done and everybody would be fine. The reality is that many, many people—we don't know how many—have no service. They cannot connect. Forget about calling triple 0. That is absolutely not available. People are now putting Starlink on their roofs and finding other ways. They're going back to ham radios—is that what we call the ones truckies use, ham radios? You know what I'm talking about.

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