Ms McBAIN (Eden-Monaro—Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories and Minister for Emergency Management) (15:26): I must admit I can't believe the member for Page had time to pitch that MPI, because of the amount of time that is being chewed up by the internal fighting between the Nationals and the Liberal Party. I'm sure it has taken up a huge amount of time. He has the absolute gall to accuse this government of abandoning regional Australia and hurting household budgets and businesses, when the Nationals spend more time talking to each other and the media than they do talking to people in their local communities. The last point that was just made by the member for Page, which was backed in by a bunch of people behind him, was so misleading. It's deliberately misleading the public on the issue of speed limits. It was the previous coalition government that determined that priority action No. 1 was to review speed limits in rural and regional Australia. In fact, it was the former deputy prime minister, the member for Riverina, who made the commitment. It was priority action No. 1. The communique that was released following that has his name attached to it along with a bunch of Liberal and National state counterparts. I'm just going to table that. So, when the Nationals are out there on some folly about how reducing road speed limits has somehow got something to do with carbon emissions, please know that the Office of Road Safety is following through with a priority action plan that was devised under their former government. I know that might not seem important, but, to us, telling the truth in local communities is important. The other truth that's incredibly important is that road funding has increased under this government. Not only has it increased for every local council across the country, but road blackspot funding has also increased. We have created the new Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program. Member for Page, you might be interested in this. It means an increase of $461 million across councils in New South Wales—over $1.2 billion in road funding to every single council—and that's not some beauty pageant grant contest. It's money that automatically goes to every single council; no colour coded spreadsheets needed. Every local council is getting more money for local roads than ever before, because we know how important it is to travel safely to your school, to your sporting events, to medical appointments, to work— Mr Chester: Invite-only grants programs. Ms McBAIN: Invite only? No. Mr Chester interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Gippsland! Ms McBAIN: Roads to Recovery is for every local council. I suggest you read up on it. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Gippsland, if you are going to ignore me, you can leave. It's your choice. Ms McBAIN: I'm really glad to be here talking about regional Australia. I come from a small town. Right now, my husband, who employs members of our local community, is doing his job as a small business owner, providing services to people where we live. We have over the weekend made an incredible change, where bulk-billing came into effect for every single Australian, regardless of what their status is. Investing in bulk-billing changes lives in regional communities. People no longer have to make a decision about whether they can afford to go to the doctor or not. For regional centres, this is very important. More than a thousand GP clinics were signed up to the new program before it even started. There are a thousand more clinics who are bulk-billing communities right across the country. I want to personally give a shout-out to Jindabyne Medical Practice, Bega Valley Medical Practice and the Goulburn Health Hub, who have all announced that they will sign up to bulk-billing every person that comes through their doors. For so long, Medicare rebates were frozen by those opposite. What we're doing instead is supporting more doctors into regional, rural and remote Australia. Why are we doing that? Because it's really bloody important. Those opposite talked about GP shortages but didn't do anything. Did they incentivise anyone? The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Minister, I'd like you to withdraw that expression. Ms McBAIN: I withdraw the words. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. Ms McBAIN: It is really important. Those opposite could have incentivised GPs to go into our regions, but did they do it? No. Instead it look a Labor government to do that. On this side of the chamber, we've made the largest investment in health care in our regions ever, with 90 urgent care clinics around the country, 31 of which are already delivered in our regions. We're investing in rural medical schools to help ensure more medical students can train and live in regional and rural communities, because we know, and the data tells us, that if they train in our regions they'll stay in our regions. There's a $90 million investment to help address healthcare shortages right across our regions. We are providing incentives for doctors and nurse practitioners by waiving their HECS fees, as I said. Speaking of HECS, how are we helping more people to earn more and keep more of what they earn? Well, we're giving students across our regions a 20 per cent reduction in their HECS bills and we're making sure that more people are eligible for tax cuts than ever before—14 million taxpayers across our communities. Why do we want more people in our regions to keep more of the money they earn? It's because when they do they go and support local small businesses, which is incredibly important. Mr Chester: They were big businesses when we were in government! Ms McBAIN: God! While those opposite are trying to work out which side of history they want to be on, we are talking about regional families and looking at how we can ease the cost of living. They're already upset, as I said, because we've doubled Roads to Recovery, whereas they sat idly by and did nothing when local councils asked for more money. What they did was freeze financial assistance grants, which took a billion dollars from local councils in all of our communities. I want to remind them of what they did when it came to the supermarket code of conduct: they introduced a voluntary code. That was great for our farmers, wasn't it? 'Let's ask the supermarkets if they'll be nicer to farmers.' Were they? No. On this side of the House, we said, 'That's not good enough; we're going to introduce a mandatory code.' But what did those opposite do? Did they vote for a mandatory code of conduct to protect farmers? No, you didn't. You wanted to leave the supermarkets to let rip and do whatever they wanted to farmers and other primary producers. On this side of the House, we said, 'Not good enough—we are going to protect farmers and small businesses with a mandatory code of conduct with multimillion-dollar penalties for those who breach it.' On big business versus farmers and families, I know who I stood with: I stood with farmers and families. I made sure there was a mandatory code of conduct to protect people. We are investing in people, in skills and training and in services. These are the investments that regional communities are calling for, and that's exactly what we are doing. We delivered prac payments because we know it's important to support people when they are training to deliver services in our regions. Our Cheaper Home Batteries Program has been so incredibly important. Ray from Braidwood in my electorate got in touch. He said his home battery system has already lowered his electricity bill. In the first month since he installed his battery, his bill dropped to $22—22 bucks. High-five, Ray. It's also really helped him to change his views and his habits on how he uses his electricity during off-peak periods. I want to make sure that in this House we are supporting regional communities and regional Australians just like Ray, and those opposite are fighting climate wars which should have been dead 20 years ago. They're out of touch with regional communities and they're out of touch with reality. Speaking of utilities, let's talk about the NBN, which is incredibly important for driving productivity in rural and regional Australia. Whether you work from home, you have a small business, you want to access health care or you are studying, it's important to have connectivity. Under those opposite, when they were in government, there was a deliberate underinvestment in communications. Instead of narrowing the technology divide, they widened it. It is so important to keep our communities connected. Just 15 minutes away from here, half of a suburb called Jerrabomberra had had fibre to the premises. Those opposite, when they came to government in 2013, ripped up the contracts and said, 'That's not important enough to us,' so for more than a decade the other half of the suburb was still dealing with copper—copper dropouts. It took another Labor government to come back and finish the rollout. It took a Labor government to deal with the data caps that were on Sky Muster satellites. During COVID, I had members of my community who were trying to learn and work from home saying, 'We got 10 days into the month and we hit our data cap,' because those opposite had data caps on satellite plans. Does that make sense in a regional community? It took us to come to government and say: 'That's not on. We're not having that.' There has been a massive investment to expand full-fibre NBN to more than 2.1 million premises across the country. It is so important in our regions to make sure we're connected. And, while I'm on it, there's the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation. We went to an election saying: 'This is incredibly important. The technology is there. Let's make the telcos do it.' Those opposite couldn't even get on board with that, for regional communities.