Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the motion as introduced by the honourable member for Pearce. The wrapping-up of the area consultative committees and the implementation of the Regional Development Australia initiative will bring real policy and funding rigour to rural and regional communities at a critical time given the current global financial crisis. The Regional Development Australia initiative will readdress the area consultative committee shortcomings and usher in greater cooperation between state and federal governments. In my home state of Victoria, an in-principle agreement on Regional Development Australia with the state government is close to being finalised. A memorandum of understanding between the Australian government and the Victorian government is currently being developed. The current duality of state and federal government departments in providing regional funding creates unwarranted red tape to the distribution of that funding, which at the moment is needed more so than ever in keeping Australians in jobs. This cooperation will instil a greater confidence between rural communities and the funding body which in the past has been tarnished as a policy that supplied funds for local improvements designed to buy votes during election years. Through this program we seek to replicate in Victoria the positive moves that South Australia has made in transitioning to the new framework.

The former Liberal Premier in South Australia, Rob Kerin, says that the Regional Development Australia network will remove the handicap which regional areas have faced for many years. This initiative will usher in new cooperative arrangements for the distribution of funding to rural and regional projects. This, of course, is critical in my own electorate and in my state, and throughout the country, for securing jobs. In the current climate of the global financial crisis, it is absolutely imperative that the processes by which funding is appropriated by regional communities to build better community infrastructure and to support community organisations is secure, fair and evenly distributed and adequate to provide jobs on the ground now.

Members of the opposition can wax lyrical about the days of the past, but that is not going to provide regional communities with what they need now. By trying to appeal to our nostalgia, the honourable member for Pearce is correct in informing this committee that area consultative committees were first formed by the Hawke Labor government as regional advisory bodies to the federal parliament. But that is where the similarity between the Hawke Labor government’s incarnation and the previous government’s manipulated area consultative committees ends. The previous government was not committed to the regions. The previous government organised the structure and the funding of area consultative committees to be politically expedient during election campaigns. Rather than adequately resourcing the area consultative committees, the previous government was pork-barrelling the money, banking it and then splashing it out during election campaigns. For the financial year of 2004-05 my electorate of Corangamite received one grant under the previous scheme. This grant was valued at $62,750. In the years leading up to the 2007 election, my electorate received six grants to the total of $1,463,000.

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