Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to concur with my colleagues, who have certainly raised a number of issues. I would like to start with an article that appeared in the Australian on 8 February. It is headed ‘Croc Festival cancelled after cuts’.

In Western Australia, my home state, I was at the Croc Festival at Meekatharra last year. Six hundred young Indigenous children were there for the week. They had an absolute ball. So after yesterday I really do wonder just where this government is going. Why would you take $3.3 million which is required to hold seven three-day events planned for 2008? Our people cannot get their funding. I think that this is just an act of hypocrisy. I am very disappointed as, I am sure, are those young Indigenous children, who travel sometimes 1,200 kilometres to be able to join in with their friends for a week—by the time they travel from home and back it is a week. They really have a most enjoyable time and they are being denied that. I would really like Senator Stephens to find out why this has happened, because it is certainly not good.

I have taken note of my Western Australian colleagues saying that we are all being punished because Labor voters are not prolific in the regional and rural areas. I have news for you: there are a lot of Labor people who live in regional and rural areas, so if this is some way of getting stuck into us then you are also hurting your own people. In Western Australia we have gone through the one vote, one value problem. We have six seats going out of the regional and rural areas into the metropolitan area, so we are going to be even worse off.

Apprentices have also been mentioned. It is very difficult to get apprentices in the rural and regional areas—and I will go back to my own state—because of the huge wages that are being offered in all the mining areas, whether they be in Ravensthorpe in the south or in the Pilbara or the Murchison in the north. There is an assistance scheme to improve the take-up of apprenticeships in the rural areas, where we have such a shortage of labour, and $47.7 million of that assistance scheme has gone. Under the incentives that we had, there was an $800 grant for tool kits, which the apprentices all absolutely enjoy, and up to $1,000 to help with training fees. To go further, we then had the living away from home allowance, and $100,000 has been taken out of that budget. That $100,000 could go a long way to helping an apprentice with their travel to and from home. Coming from stations and trying to get into a regional centre, a lot of them really do struggle with their travel costs alone, without their board and accommodation. So I just cannot understand this. You are trying to boost training, especially trade training places, and you are doing this sort of thing. It is denying some of these younger rural people the chance to take up an apprenticeship, to do a trade. Now there is just no money.

Last year, according to our statistics, 50,000 people left the agricultural and horticultural industry as the drought crippled rural areas. When the drought eases, how will we get those people back? They have had to go elsewhere to get jobs and they will not come back because the money that they have earned away they will not be able to earn when they get back into rural areas. So once again we have this problem. The Growing Regions program is being abolished. I know my colleagues have already spoken about this, but once again this was to be a huge benefit for us in rural Western Australia. We have a lot of sea change and now tree change people. What has happened is that small rural communities have attracted many people from the city to come and live in their area and enjoy the lifestyle, and those towns just cannot afford the infrastructure to cope with the massive expansion of the population. So once again they will be in trouble.

I am really disappointed about plans for the FarmBis sector, because once again this is a training thing. It is a jointly funded initiative between the Australian, the state and the territory governments. This is about helping rural people become more proficient in their business, and that is what it is about. Agriculture is a business. It is not just a farm and a lifestyle any longer. To remain there and to be sustainable, it has to be a business, and these people should be helped, not hindered.

There are also green vouchers for schools. There are huge problems there. We as a government were accused of not doing anything about climate change. Last year on 17 July, $336 million was given to Australian primary and secondary schools, including rural and remote schools. They could get $50,000 grants to help install rainwater and solar hot water systems. Now we have the Victorian environmental activist Mr Eric Noel, who persuaded the Howard government to start up the initiative, saying:

Why discontinue green vouchers? It is likely to cost millions of dollars simply to rebadge the program and call it something else. Why not keep the existing program and improve it as promised?

Already 3,000 schools have received grants, but there are another 6,000 that have been left in limbo. During the election campaign Labor announced it would replace the green vouchers scheme with the National Solar Schools Plan, costing $489,000 over eight years. Under the plan, schools would be able to apply for grants of up to $20,000, or up to $30,000 for their rainwater tanks. This just will not help. Unfortunately, after having a program there, it is going to be impossible to get all these other schools to apply again.

We have heard a lot about Regional Partnerships. I have had a lot to do with Regional Partnerships and strongly supported any application from the rural areas of Western Australia that I considered worthy. I am certainly out amongst the shires a lot, and one of the projects is not very far from me, at a place called Mount Barker. The partnership was between the Shire of Plantagenet, which covers that area, and the Mount Barker Baptist Church. These people have been through quite a lot of negotiations. Their business plan was signed off. They have been able to lease premises in Mount Barker to provide a community centre which will include an alternative school for disadvantaged and disenfranchised youth, a full-time youth worker and drop-in centre, a telecentre which would be the management hub for the Mount Barker Baptist community centre and would provide support for the alternative school, a food bank, after-school care and any one-off programs required. The food bank facility would provide food for any young person or townspeople in need. They are seeking funding for a chef through the National Community Crime Prevention Program. The canteen would service all functions held in the auditorium as well as the sporting activities on the adjacent oval and provide meals and refreshments for special functions held within the community centre. They would also have after-school care and holiday programs.

I thought this was a great project and I have given it my full support. The previous Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the Hon. Mark Vaile, approved the project, but shortly after that the 2007 election was called. Unfortunately, no further action on these applications has taken place. We have asked and asked, but we still cannot get any reply as to whether the funding is going to go on. They have to sign a 55-year lease and they will be paying rent on premises which they cannot use if they do not get their funding. It is at the heart of the Regional Partnership funding and the reason it has been such a success. This happens in a number of small communities. We really rely on Regional Partnership funding. We do not abuse the system and any of these partnership programs that I have supported are very good and well supported. In closing, I would really like to say to the minister: please reconsider what you are doing because rural and regional Australia need a lot more support. They do not need money taken away. I am sure, if the budget cuts have to come, there are areas other than regional and rural Australia.