Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to speak to this motion. The problems in towns of country Australia are not new, and any of us who have travelled through them are well aware of a number of the significant ones that are there. I cannot say that I come from rural Australia, but I certainly come from what might be called regional Australia—in the west of Sydney, in the Blue Mountains. I have for some years looked after coalition-held seats both on the north coast and in western New South Wales. The point that Senator Sterle put this afternoon—and that I want to re-emphasise—is that the difficulties in regional and rural Australia did not just appear overnight, and the answers to them are not going to come with the wave of a magic wand. I do not doubt Senator Ian Macdonald’s sincerity in what he said about what he believes to be our past failings. But we are committed to ensuring that they will not happen again, and if Senator Ian Macdonald wants to make sure that scrutiny is observed then I, and I am sure my colleagues, welcome it.

The difficulties in regional and rural Australia are, as I said, not new. Only this morning I received an email from a Labor Party branch member in Wilcannia who was reminding me of some of the great difficulties that are confronted by Australians who live outside the major centres. He emailed me about the ageing population in that town. He talked to me, as have many others, about how young people are leaving the towns because there is no work or opportunities for them and how that is now a problem because there are no skilled or unskilled workers left in the towns to do the jobs that are necessary. He talked to me about the difficulties confronting our regional and rural Australians in the health field as well, where they have to travel long distances to go to hospital because the hospitals are just not available there.

I said that these are not new problems and we do not have the magic wand at hand to correct them overnight. But, indeed, we are committed to pursuing the solutions to make sure that every Australian is treated equally and has the same access to services whether they be living in Sydney or Wilcannia. So I am disturbed about the level of anger that Senator Macdonald directed towards us in his speech this afternoon.

Senator Sterle raised a number of significant points in his contribution. The fact that the coalition, in their last few years in government, decided to treat the people they claim as their own natural party base with contempt in the way they used these rorts in the Regional Partnerships schemes is a disgrace. I highlighted to you earlier, Mr Acting Deputy President Sandy Macdonald, the difficulties that you and I know are confronting our state. But what was the previous government’s solution to these difficulties? As Senator Sterle has outlined, we know exactly what you thought of your natural constituency: you thought you had to buy them, and you did it in a really crass way.

I remember seeing a film some years ago with Paul Newman in it, which was about a governor of Louisiana called Earl Long. There is a nice paved road in the county, then it is a dirt road, then it is a paved road again. A journalist from New York came down and said to Earl: ‘Why is that dirt and why is that paved?’ Earl said: ‘It’s simple. The county that has got paved roads votes for me; the one that doesn’t, does not have paved roads, it’s got a dirt road. And until they vote for me, they are going to have a dirt road.’

That is the way that you have treated your natural constituency for some years. You took them for granted; you thought that they could be bought with beads; but you never actually went to the heart of some of the problems confronting regional and rural Australia. That is why you got it in the neck at the last federal election.

Mr Acting Deputy President, you would know as well as I do the number of rorts that were carried out very quickly in that last period. As I understand, between 3.25 pm and 4.04 pm on 31 August 2004, the then parliamentary secretary for transport approved 15 projects in the government’s Regional Partnerships program. As a result of actions like that, the Auditor-General produced a report in November of last year—a massive three-volume, 1,200-page report that picks apart the first three years of the program which handed out $327 million to more than 1,000 projects ranging in size from $2 million to $11 million. You took what you saw as your natural constituency for granted. You treated them as mugs, and they revolted on you. Why wouldn’t you look at something to do with rural health or rural unemployment in those areas? Why wouldn’t you do something like that? But no, you did not.

Senator Sterle has outlined some of the programs that received money in this period. Mrs De-Anne Kelly sought $9,720 to upgrade the Cannon Valley Pony Club. At some point she also sought, and received—83 minutes before the government went into caretaker mode—$220,000 for a horse show in Rockhampton. The then Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party, Mark Vaile, in this period sought and received $500,000 for a lifesaving club in Bonny Hills and indeed, to his credit, a medical centre in Lake Cathie in his electorate. In the seat of Hume—and I appreciate Senator Stephens bringing this to my attention—Alby Schultz, the member, promised 800 grand to the Anglican community for repairs and restoration of the cathedral in Goulburn. He got this by announcing in the local paper that he had got the commitment from the Prime Minister, because it would take too long to go through the proper channels. Alby is a Liberal, so you do not need to grimace, Mr Acting Deputy President—I think there is another Liberal, so Senator Adams can defend him; I do not think you need to.