Senator Barnaby Joyce
Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water
Leader of The Nationals in the Senate
LNP Senator for Queensland
7 October 2011
Regional Cities program puts surfing over mining
Tony Burke today announced the Building Better Regional Cities program for which less than 10 per cent of the 565 councils in Australia can apply for.
In his announcement, Mr Burke said that:
The Gillard Government is unlocking housing supply so that fly-in fly-out is no longer the only option in communities experiencing record levels of growth.
Here is a quick geography lesson for Mr Burke. The mines are in towns like Dalby, Cloncurry, Karratha, Mt Isa, Charters Towers, Mt Tom Price, Biloela, Emerald, Chinchilla and Roma. In the future towns like Charleville and Quilpie. None of these towns are eligible for funding.
The Labor party must think it is better for parents in the mining industry to fly-in and fly-out rather than finish work and drive home to their kids.
Every town that is eligible for funding in Queensland is on the beach, except for Toowoomba.
Labor party policy prefers fish and chips over the real vision of new, inland population centres.
This program announcement comes after the debacle of their RDA fund mark 1, where to get a grant it was generally advised to be in a Labor or Independent friendly seat. Under that round, two-thirds of the money went to the one-third of the seats held by Labor in regional Australia.
The Labor party has once more shown that they are not a party of vision but a defender of the demographic status quo. They have no vision to build new population centres, no vision to move people to where the resource wealth is created. Instead they are taking the wealth of the regions to use it to bolster up their failing political franchise in established urban centres.
More information-Matthew Canavan 0458 709433