I WROTE last week about the horrendous attrition Swan Hill and Mallee have suffered under Labor’s scorched earth approach to regional Australia with the double-whammy of Albanese and Allan Labor Governments.
Mallee shires constantly tell me how hard it is to fix the roads, deliver community infrastructure and even survive financially.
The Nationals’ commitments this week on Local Roads and Community Infrastructure (LRCI) funding and a new dedicated regional fund will be music to the ears of Swan Hill Rural City Council and their Mallee sister councils.
The Nationals will put $20 billion aside for a Regional Australia Future Fund (the ‘RAFF’), providing a stream of funding programs every year out of future fund earnings – ending childcare deserts, fixing local roads, fixing mobile black spots, providing the health services and training we desperately need to fix a dire health workforce crisis, and more.
Importantly, the RAFF will be legislated and therefore permanent, giving money to shires in perpetuity, year on year, regardless of who is in government.
That is the dividend The Nationals want to pay to Australia’s economic engine room, regional Australia.
The RAFF will be seeded, in part, through The Nationals’ commitment to de-fund Labor’s destructive Rewiring the Nation Fund, which threatens to turn regional Australia into an industrial wasteland of 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, and over 1000 more wind turbines in Mallee alone.
The Nationals have also secured $1.5 billion to provide the infrastructure desperately needed to immediately unlock over 100,000 new homes in regional Australia within the next 12 months, adding to housing supply and improving regional housing affordability.
The Nationals have committed a $1 billion boost for LRCI so Swan Hill Rural City Council and every shire in regional Australia can deliver their priority projects.
Council recently used LRCI to put solar panels on its leisure centres, upgrade Nyah Community Centre, beautify Lake Boga’s southern entrance and put shade over Robinvale’s Skate and Nature Play area.
I, with The Nationals, am 100 per cent focused on you and regional Australia and RAFF will reduce the need for council rate hikes adding to your cost-of-living burden.
See also: Labor’s risking lives with poor roads and health services
