Senator BOB COLLINS(3.27 p.m.) —The National Party has consistently been used as a doormat by the Liberals since the election. If ever I saw proof of it, it was the doorstop interview done by the Leader of the National Party, Mr Tim Fischer, the Deputy Prime Minister, on the diesel fuel rebate scheme. He rushed out to the side door of the ministerial wing entrance—to the great chagrin, I am told, of many regional members of the Liberal Party—and claimed the entire credit for the National Party. He said that it was a huge victory for the National Party to save the diesel fuel rebate scheme after five months of destabilising public debate when it was under real threat. So the great victory of the National Party was to protect against the Liberal Party a program which the Labor Party had kept in place in its whole 13 years of government. What a huge victory, Senator Boswell!

But have a look at what has happened since. In response to an interjection from Senator Panizza, which was responded to by Senator Schacht, about what we did to the ABC when we were in government, I say to him that we expanded the services of the ABC. Do not be such an ignoramus! To my great chagrin, as Senator Schacht said quite correctly, programs which we funded in government to expand the services of the ABC in places like the Northern Territory have since been axed by this government. Go and talk to the people in the small communities in the Northern Territory who were really looking forward to getting Triple J, which we had announced and funded, but who will now not get it because the expansion program has been axed. That is one thing the National Party should not have let the Liberals get away with.

I will tell you, Senator Boswell, the other thing the National Party should not have let them get away with—axing the BARA program, which I referred to in question time today in a question to the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (Senator Herron), who has nothing to do with this portfolio despite what he thinks.

The business advice for rural areas program was a highly successful program that this government put into place. In an assessment that was made of the last financial year alone, it created an estimated 1,400 jobs in country Australia and set up a huge number of small businesses. I saw the work the BARA office did in the town of Katherine in the Northern Territory. It delivered great value for money. But what did this government do? It abolished it in the budget. It closed it down. A service that rural Australia once got and that measurably provided benefits is now being removed from rural Australia.

Last Friday, the minister for aboriginal affairs, in what he himself described as a major speech outlining new directions for Aboriginal affairs in Australia, recommended the BARA scheme, the business advice in rural areas scheme, to Aboriginal Australians to help them start up small businesses so they would not be unemployed. And this is a minister of a government which axed it in the budget and closed it down. Then, when the minister went on Meet the Press last night and had that very proposition put to him by Paul Bongiorno—you suggested last Friday, Minister, that Aboriginal people should access the BARA scheme, but you have closed it down—he said, `Yes, but I am going to talk to ATSIC about some interim funding for it. It was a decision the ATSIC board made to close it down.' This is straight off the top of the head. This is a minister who, on every single day that passes here in the Senate, demonstrates that he knows nothing whatever about his portfolio; in fact, he is indicating not even the slightest interest in learning anything.

For three days this nonsense has been perpetuated. The BARA scheme in fact is administered by the Department of Primary Industries and Energy. It was not a decision of the ATSIC board—how could it have been?—to close it down. It was a decision of that portfolio and its minister to close it down. To suggest, as the minister did last night, that ATSIC would divert funding into the Department of Primary Industries and Energy to keep a program going that they have lost is utter nonsense!

You closed the BARA scheme down. You closed down the expansion of the ABC into rural Australia, and you closed down the entire department of regional development. And what did your minister say? He made the most astonishing statement out of Canberra that I, coming from regional Australia, have seen in 20 years in this business. He said there is `no rationale or constitutional basis for the Commonwealth's involvement in regional development in Australia'. That is in his press statement. Where does that statement leave the National Party?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Senator Panizza, you have about one minute.