Senate debates

Tuesday, 13 June 2023

Statements by Senators

Rural and Regional Australia: Infrastructure

1:30 pm

Photo of Anne RustonAnne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

We've had a year of Labor and what have we got for it? We've got a raft of broken promises, we've got a country unnecessarily divided over the Voice and absolutely everybody is worse off. But, as someone who hails from country Australia, the thing that has probably distressed me most about this last year is the absolute contempt that this government has shown for rural, regional and remote Australia, and it hasn't even tried to hide that shameful fact. They've cut critical infrastructure out of our regional communities, they've ripped general practitioners out of our communities and they're now even putting your local community pharmacy at risk.

The really weird thing about this is that the much-heralded budget surplus that we saw during the budget all came about on the back of rural and regional Australia. It was our booming resources sector and our fabulous agricultural sector that allowed Jim Chalmers to stand there and say that we had a budget—

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