Mr RONALDSON (2:36 PM) —My question is addressed to the Acting Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Acting Prime Minister advise what action the government is taking to ensure that remote communities and regional and rural communities, such as those in my electorate of Ballarat, have the ability to maximise their social and economic future?

Mr ANDERSON (Deputy Prime Minister) —I thank the honourable member for his question and acknowledge his very real interest in creating opportunities for rural and regional Australia, much of which is experiencing what might be called the tough end of very real economic change.

The Regional Solutions Program will provide $90 million over four years. It is a direct response, along with a range of other initiatives, to last year's Regional Australia Summit. It joins, for example, such initiatives as the $1.8 billion expenditure outlined in the areas of health, Agriculture—Advancing Australia and more equitable access to education, particularly in remote areas. Of course, since then there has been the salinity and water commitment of the government—a very full, detailed and comprehensive response to the needs that were outlined at that summit.

The Regional Solutions Program recognises that one-size-fits-all programs coming out of Canberra—where Canberra pretends that it knows best—do not work. Regional communities want to share responsibility with government for their region's development. They want to be given the tools and the capacity to take forward their own drive and their own ideas and to develop their own futures. The program targets communities experiencing economic and social disadvantage, including particularly high levels of unemployment and inadequate services. It is designed to help such communities build capacity and to identify and implement development opportunities. It will complement other government programs such as the Rural Transaction Centres, Stronger Families and Communities, Networking the Nation, and of course the Regional Assistance Program. Communities can seek assistance in conjunction with these other programs if that best meets their needs.

After careful analysis of a number of programs that have been put forward for other government initiatives that did not quite fit, we have announced five pilot programs, one of which is in fact in the electorate of the member who asked the question, the member for Ballarat, and that is $56,000 to the Creswick district newspaper to enlarge that community's newspaper's operations and distribution, including the establishment of Internet facilities. It is very important indeed that people in rural, regional and remote areas be given an opportunity to upskill their abilities in areas which are going to be critical to people accessing the new economy. I know that that has been very welcome. Other examples include $330,000 to the Border Highlands Rail to restore the nationally significant Wallangarra railway station as part of an attempt to build a tourism industry with much greater depth in that hard-pressed region.

In the Atherton Tablelands, which has experienced enormous stress in recent years through the winding back, for example, of the tobacco industry and where farmers have been affected by that and a whole range of other problems, there is nearly $300,000 for that community to develop, through a community liaison officer, a whole new range of both domestic and export markets. There is $55,000 going to the Northern Territory Christian Schools Association to promote greater integration of education and community wellbeing at a remote community there, and there is $100,000 to conduct a Tweed Shire agricultural land viability study as people in that area cope with enormous change in land use management. There are a variety of programs from planning through to modest seed funding for capital infrastructure available under this very useful, flexible program which is designed to help communities meet their own needs and drive forward their own ideas and their own initiatives in partnership rather than being dictated to by Canberra.