Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Regional Health, Regional Communications and Local Government. Will the minister update the House on the measures the Morrison-McCormack government has taken to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of rural, regional and remote Australians throughout the pandemic?

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker, Minister for Regional Health, Regional Communications and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mallee for her question. At the start of the pandemic, there was great concern around regional, rural and remote Australia about what the impacts of COVID might be—and the Prime Minister just alluded to that in his last answer—particularly in remote and regional Aboriginal communities. But regional Australia stepped up admirably, with the assistance of programs put in by the Commonwealth, with respiratory clinics across the country. Telehealth has been a huge boon for delivering health services to regional Australia. There is the deal with the Royal Flying Doctor Service on retrievals. I'm looking forward to catching up with them tomorrow again to look at how the Flying Doctor Service might help us in the next phase of this program. So, as a result, there is probably no other place on the planet that has been a safer place to be in the last 18 months than regional Australia.

The member asked about livelihoods as well. What was discovered was that people can work from regional Australia and keep their jobs. Many people were supported with JobKeeper and JobSeeker, but many people chose to work from home. As a minister in this government I worked on a Sky Muster satellite connection for 10 weeks. All my phone calls and all my Zoom meetings went through the Sky Muster satellite. We had children—sent home from boarding school—being educated right across the country on the connections we have. But we have recognised that this is the way of the future, and, through the Regional Connectivity Program, the last two rounds, there is $153 million delivering high-capacity broadband right across regional Australia. Last week I was in Richmond, in northern Queensland, and those communities right up through there, in the member for Kennedy's electorate, are going to be covered by high-capacity broadband.

The other thing that we did as a government through the pandemic was that we went to a sector that this government has a very close relationship with, and that's local government. We understood that we needed to put stimulus in right from the start, and local government stepped up, with three rounds of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program, in the first instance, delivering jobs to people who found themselves in difficult circumstances because of COVID, and, ultimately, leaving those communities with infrastructure that is going to help sustain and grow them—a long-term legacy for those communities. So I would like to pay tribute to the local governments right across this country that have stepped up and supported their communities.

There is one more step to go, and that is the vaccination program. Regional Australians are stepping up. I've been to Aboriginal medical services, I've been to respiratory clinics, I've been to GPs right across this country, and they're saying that the Aboriginal communities and the people of regional Australia understand that they are still vulnerable to this COVID, and they are stepping up and they are taking the vaccine. They're protecting themselves, their community and their country. (Time expired)