John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Hansard source

No, it was the last time I was there. I have mentioned probably the two biggest issues—water and the need for a freeway across the Great Dividing Range, not just for the sake of western New South Wales but also for the sake of Sydney, and that should include rail. Speaking as somebody who has lived their whole life west of the Great Dividing Range, I believe it would be fair to say that, almost without exception, all the people who live in that 80 per cent or more of New South Wales—in whichever electorate it may be—are dependent on its mining, agriculture, forestry and transport. Those are the primary industries supporting it. Whether it is in the coal mines of Lithgow, in forestry at Oberon or in the agricultural industries at Bathurst, people tell me I must go to Canberra and ensure that the Greens do not put an end to what western New South Wales stands for. Without a doubt there is a fear of the Greens holding power in Canberra. Probably the biggest talking point from day one of the last election is the fact that the Greens might hold power. In order the Greens seem to hate mining, forestry, agriculture and then transport.

My phone ran hot the day the local Green said we had to take away any fuel rebates for the trucking industry, get B-doubles off the road and put everything on rail. Do they really think that, in Orange, Cobar, Lithgow or anywhere else for that matter, a train is going to run goods to Woollies or Coles? Of course, those goods have got to go out on trucks. That is the most crazy thing I have ever heard. The Greens hate forestry, whether you grow it or whether it is native forest you cut down which you let regenerate or you replant. The Greens hate agriculture because we use the soil to grow food to feed people. The Greens hate mining because we dig up coal, copper or gold. Where I come from people are not stupid. They know they want to be warm and they know they want to be able to see at night. They are only going to be able to do that if we use coal. Anyone who thinks we are going to feed and clothe the world, keep people warm and give them something to see by at night from just using renewables is living in a dream world. I think most of us know that.

People in western New South Wales have heard some of the crazy Green suggestions of things we should do—including a carbon tax. It is easy for me to stand up for somebody who is not prepared to wear that, who is not prepared to see mining go, who is not prepared to see forestry go, who is not prepared to see agriculture go. You do wonder sometimes where people are coming from and you do wonder sometimes whether they think human beings should exist.

Calare is a unique and wonderful place to live. There are not many places better than my part of the world. I started in politics having one-third of New South Wales, almost 300,000 square kilometres. The electorate of Calare has come down to just over 30,000. I have gone from the South Australian border to the Great Dividing Range as a result of various redistributions. There are very few people, I suspect, who know western New South Wales and all its various aspects better than I do. I am incredibly proud to still be there and to still be a member of the National Party and the coalition.

I do believe that very few people who come into this place are bad people. We believe in what we believe in, and I believe in rural and regional Australia and I believe in my country. But I very much believe that in places like Calare, western New South Wales—any regional part of Australia—we are just part of Australia and sometimes we have to look at the good in everybody rather than just our own. By the same token, health services are not as good outside the major cities, be it Melbourne—where Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou’s electorate is—or Sydney or Perth. Without doubt, health is the biggest issue facing politics today, and Calare is no different. We are lucky to have Orange, which has the only serious medical centre west of the Blue Mountains. However, the small hospitals have to be maintained.

I believe that our policy of empowering locals to have a say, rather than simply having bureaucrats making decisions, is absolutely essential. I would guess that New South Wales and Queensland are the two parts of Australia that have suffered most from governments deciding that everything had to be done on a large scale to allow bureaucrats to move things as they saw fit—rather than allowing the people who suffer from a lack of hospitals and a lack of medical services to have a say.

I remember when I jackarooed in Queensland, quite a long time ago, I thought that Queensland had one of the best medical systems in Australia. That is no longer true, just as New South Wales certainly has the worst medical system in Australia. When I think that Orange, which is over the Blue Mountains, has a small helicopter which is not winch-equipped, is allowed to fly only in daylight, and is an hour’s flying time from the serious centres of Sydney, and Wollongong, which is 12 minutes flying time from Sydney, has a large helicopter and gets fewer calls than Orange gets, I realise the level to which New South Wales Health has sunk in a political sense. It is more important that Wollongong, with all of its safe state Labor seats, gets something it does not need before Orange gets something it does need. Orange has to look after everywhere out to Cobar, 600 kilometres west.

I am still shocked and I still get very angry when I think about the cancer centres of excellence that were set up by the Rudd Labor government to look after rural, regional and remote Australia and the fact that Gosford was preferred to the whole of western New South Wales to have a cancer centre of excellence. I have no problem with Gosford having the best medical services they can have. But Gosford is only one hour from Newcastle and one hour from Sydney—probably less than that—and yet everywhere from Lithgow to Cobar, in fact from Broken Hill, went without. To me that is about as bad and as political as medicine can ever get. It is something that the Rudd government will be forever shamed on, and it was simply because they wanted to keep the marginal seat of Robertson. They did not give one cent of that money to an area 10 times the size and with a far greater population.

I will finish by saying that I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the issues that matter to my electorate—but not just my electorate. I consider myself a member for western New South Wales and for regional Australia generally. I also consider myself a good Australian when I need to be. But health is an enormous issue. Hospitals are an enormous issue. Forbes and Parkes have been promised new hospitals but have been sort of put on the back burner and they do not know when that is going to happen. We have lost private hospitals in Bathurst. Thank heaven we do have a new hospital being built in Orange, because Orange is the only serious medical centre west of the Great Divide, and it needs to be.

The rain since Christmas has breathed new life into western New South Wales. Until the last election, I had the most drought-affected electorate in the whole of Australia—without doubt since 2001 or 2002, when this drought really started. To see that country come alive, as it has, is enormous for the whole of western New South Wales. I should add that I hope nobody forgets that rain is not money; rain gives the opportunity to earn it. All of those farmers and their communities, whether people own a pharmacy or whether they work in the local supermarket, are totally affected by what happens to the agricultural situation around them. None of them have made money yet; they have only had the opportunity to make it. The rain that has come has already resulted in enormous losses with the best crops in a decade in Central Queensland, and that looks like it is happening in northern New South Wales. It is a cruel jest that Mother Nature has played for the last decade. There will be a lot of grain. I just hope that it is grain that can be sold to sustain the local community.

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