Mr NEVILLE (4:08 PM) —I asked for the opportunity to speak to this motion because the suggestion that the government has failed to address the needs of people living in regional Australia is absurd. It is also hypocritical coming from a party that has no policy platform for regional Australia and has even had to change its shadow minister in the term of this parliament. The coalition has made a multibillion dollar investment in regional Australia and has strengthened its focus on regional and rural Australia. The government's regional Australia strategy is all about helping to restore access to financial, health and welfare services, comparable with Australia's capital cities.

If the member for Shortland honestly believes that the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne and the urban areas of the Hunter are regional Australia, she has confirmed in my mind why, during the 1993-1996 term of the parliament, the true regional and rural Australia was so badly treated. It was during that period that funding that was meant for regional Australia, for rural Australia and the true regions—the provincial cities of Australia—was siphoned off into the western suburbs of Sydney and the northern suburbs of Melbourne. A very good sleight of hand trick it was.

The member for Shortland claims that the government has failed to provide jobs, services and adequate health resources to regional Australia. I will deal with each of those separately. The government has been committed to tackling the seminal problem of unemployment and the social difficulties that lead from it. Those of us who lived during the Keating era know only too well what an unemployment rate of 11.2 per cent, and even higher in country areas, did to the morale of regional and rural Australia. Under the coalition, the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.1 per cent with predictions it will drop to 6.5 per cent in the near future.

We now have an economic climate of low inflation, low interest rates and a budget surplus. Does the member for Shortland have any idea what Labor's high interest rates did to the social and commercial fabric of farming and small business communities in regional Australia? It is a heck of a lot better going to a bank to get a home loan at six or seven per cent or a business loan at eight or 8½ per cent than it is to have to pay twice that figure, as we did under Labor.

The government has developed employment initiatives such as Work for the Dole and Green Corps that are specifically relevant to regional Australia. The highly successful Work for the Dole Program has given people a chance to shift back into the work force and to train and to gain experience while making a significant contribution to the community and similarly with Green Corps. That is without even mentioning the $1½ billion which has been expended on the Natural Heritage Fund—the biggest environmental restoration program in Australian history, and most of it in regional and rural Australia.

The government has also created five times as many sites for the delivery of employment services through Job Network. If the member for Shortland had a look at her area, she would find there are more providers there than there were under the old CES. Performance data has also shown that the Job Network is outperforming the old CES and has been of particular benefit for regional employers and job seekers. About $40 million has been provided for Area Consultative Committee operations and Regional Assistance Program projects in 1999-2000. Funding is being directed to RAP projects that are likely to create new jobs, assist small business and improve the regional skills base.

The ACCs have a far more visionary role than the old ACCs and the regional economic development organisations, which Labor could not get into full stride during its term of office. Having worked for 20 years in regional development, let me say that Labor made one fundamental error with the ACCs and REDOs. It denied the importance of local ownership and stifled initiative through a heavy top-down approach. I would like to see this initiative widen further with greater emphasis on the RDOs as distinct from the REDOs.

The RDOs are the state based regional development boards that provide regional coverage for tourism and industry development on a region by region basis. These organisations reflect the wider community interest and do not cover the bureaucratic and irrelevant expenses that were imposed on regional Australia by the Keating government. The old REDOs were doomed to fail before they started. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that, as soon as the drip feed was turned off, most of them went to the wall. They had no basis of local ownership and no commitment from local business or local government.

In contrast, the RDOs contain elements of private subscription, local government support and, in many instances, even state government support. I can only speak with authority on the Queensland system but it has proven, especially in tourism, to be a very effective weapon for coalescing the initiatives and marketing strengths of individual regions. A federal government contribution for industry and general regional development could turn these organisations into veritable powerhouses.

I have two such organisations in my electorate: the Bundaberg District Tourism Development Board, and Gladstone Area Promotion and Development Ltd. They have carefully blended elements of tourism and industry development within the framework of local awareness and ownership. The organisations have 400 and 350 members respectively, and it means that businesses and professional people can share the responsibility with government for delivering industrial job creation outcomes in their own regions.

The member for Shortland also claims the government has failed to address the need for services in regional and rural Australia. However, since the last election, the government has strengthened its focus on regional Australia by establishing a regional services portfolio. The opposition could not even match it with a continuous shadow ministry. We have been facilitating the return of services to regional communities, services that were lost during the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this is the rural transaction centres, where the government has committed to spend $70 million over five years to help rural communities with populations of up to 3,000 establish their own rural transaction centres.

These centres aim to provide improved basic services and government services, blended together to cover such matters as personal banking, some business banking, postal services, Medicare Easyclaim, phone and fax. The first RTC was opened by the Prime Minister on 29 October, and it is expected that seven more will be opened before Christmas. Further, the government recently allocated funding for three RTCs to go ahead in the new year and another 24 in rural communities, including Agnes Water and Miriam Vale in my electorate, where feasibility studies concerning an RTC are under way.

The government has reintroduced the Black Spot program, which Labor abandoned. This program is improving road safety, particularly in regional areas where the majority of allocated funding has been spent. It is working because it is minutely defined, the target is detailed and the funding is closely focused.

Yet another black spot program—not to be confused with the roads one—is in the area of communications, where $160 million will be allocated to bring SBS and other television to areas neglected for the full 13 years of Labor government. This program will help regional and rural Australia enjoy better television access—as will improvements to Internet access being made available by this government through its Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. The previous Labor government, on the other hand, decided to shut down the analog phone network in favour of GSM digital technology. Everybody in regional and rural Australia is aware of this fatal error. Everyone knows that GSM has nothing like the coverage of the old analog and, were it not for the fact that the government in agreement with Telstra was able to introduce CDMA, they would have left regional and rural Australia in a parlous condition.

This shows on a whole area of fronts that the previous government had an appalling record of lack of concern. Those of us who lived through the Goss state Labor government in Queensland—with the closure of train lines, DPI offices and courthouses—would know that there is no commitment in the opposition, at either the state or the federal level, to reinvigorate, reinforce and reintroduce facilities and services to regional and rural Australia.