John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about a very real person from the Nyngan community called Denise Ward, who was killed in a car accident recently. Mrs Ward was a pillar of the Nyngan community and everybody who knew her—and that was certainly most people in the region—was shattered by her loss in that car accident. David and her family have the sincere condolences of myself and everybody else who knows them as well as those who do not know them but know of them because they have always worked tirelessly on behalf of the people of the region, and I am sure the family still will. That would include, in Denise’s case, working for what used to be called the Rural Lands Protection Board, the Country Women’s Association and many other volunteer groups in our region. Denise was passionate about the economic and social development of Nyngan and the Bogan shire and was one of those people who was always willing to stand up and put her hand up. It is a funny thing, but the people who do that seem to get asked to do it all the time and Denise was someone who did not avoid it.

She was always willing to help out with her friends, her neighbours and the general community and she never looked for any kudos—people like her quite often never do—but she always said good things about people rather than bad. Her passing is an incredibly sad loss, not just to the people of Nyngan town and Nyngan shire but to western New South Wales and Australia in general.

I also wish to talk about an issue which is of great importance to everybody in regional Australia and particularly to some of my country in the west, and that is communications. Regional communications have been belted again. Not long ago, we had the then new government renege on a contract with Optus which would have provided broadband to almost everybody—98 per cent of Australians. During the estimates this week it was revealed that, of the $400 million interest earned by the former Communications Fund, which was set up to earn interest to be spent on maintaining and keeping regional Australia in touch with the latest developments—and this interest was promised by the Rudd government—just $75 million has been allocated to projects in response to the regional telecommunications review. The rest has vanished into the entirely unrelated Building Australia Fund, which sometime in never-never land not only is supposed to look after Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane but way beyond that, possibly by 2025, may give everyone except eight per cent of Australians in regional Australia some kind of broadband.

We are talking at a time when the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are quite happy to run up a $315 billion debt. They claim, as they mentioned in estimates, that the remaining $325 million out of the $400 million which was promised to regional communications is coming, but it is unbudgeted and they do not know when it will come. Yet we should hold our breath and wait for it. Regional Australia has been done over on this, like it has been done over on water and like it has been done over on infrastructure generally.