Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, thank you. They keep the lights on, don't they? Yes, they do. They provide the food and fibre for our nation, and we should be thankful. Every time we tuck our knees under the table for breakfast, lunch or dinner, we should say thank you to a farmer. By the sweat of their brow, by the hard work that they do, they put food on the table and clothes on our backs, not just for Australia but for many other countries besides. As Senator McKenzie leaves the chamber to go to the other place, I thank her, too, for what she's doing in the shadow infrastructure role.

As we are all here, we should be exalting and praising the people of regional Australia, but there are a few facts that we need to consider. One is those is the fact that regional Australia is not getting the funding it once received—funding that it was granted by the coalition government. Where is the Building Better Regions Fund? That fund enabled local government councils—like those in the Bega Valley, in the member for Lingiari's seat and in all of our regional seats—to build an aquatics centre, work on the Main Street upgrade or whatever the case might be. Where is the Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program fund? There are 537 local councils across Australia, many of them in regional Australia, and that fund gave them the autonomy to decide to spend the money where their community needed it, wanted it, demanded it and expected it. It gave them the autonomy of local decision-making, which has been stripped away by Labor, because they've taken the fund away. If you take the fund away, you can't put asphalt on the road. What our communities want is not a discussion about whether the speed limit should be dropped from 100 to 80 or 70 kilometres per hour. What they want to see is hard cash for hard asphalt, and they're not getting it at the moment—they simply aren't.

We had the health minister before. He's has trotted off, but that's okay. We were hearing from the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories in an earlier contribution about health. I think we would all agree that country people do it tougher than those in the leafy suburbs and under the bright city lights of metropolitan areas. They really do. We as regional members should do everything we can to make sure there is equity in health. We as opposition need to keep the government accountable. Those in government, those people opposite, what they need to do is make sure they champion health outcomes for regional people.

If you're not getting it, then tell your ministers—as part of the expenditure review committee process, as part of the cabinet process—to lift their game, because at the moment unfortunately they are not. The first order of business for Labor was to take away the distribution priority areas, so many of those country doctors took their shingle off and they moved to the Gold Coast or they moved to Newcastle or they moved to Wollongong. I'll tell you where they weren't: they weren't in regional Australia. They weren't in the remote areas of Lingiari in the Northern Territory and elsewhere in Australia. That is such a shame, because we need more doctors.

What we did in government, and what I did as the deputy prime minister was to put in the Murray Darling Medical Schools Network: $94.5 to get those wonderful medical precincts. I agree with the member for Eden-Monaro when she said that a doctor trained in the bush is more than likely to stay in the country areas, because they fall in love with the area. Moreover, they usually fall in love with somebody from that area, and they stay in the area.

Let's all agree we need to do more for regional Australia. To those Labor members, who are in government: lift your game.

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