All government services for the people of Port Macquarie rely on a strong economy to deliver the revenue that funds them.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Government decisions on how to spend that revenue then needs to be in line with what the people want. On the Mid North Coast, and across Australia, people have long made those spending priorities clear.
Those priorities are: Ongoing progress on health, education, infrastructure and the welfare safety net.
In parliament this week I asked Deputy Minister Michael McCormack about the cost to regional Australia of a potential change in approach to those priorities by government.
For example, the cumulative cost of our opponents’ policies on border protection the last time they were in office was $11.6 billion, spent in totally ineffective efforts to deal with the massive influx of illegal arrivals based on people smuggling rackets.
That’s more than the commonwealth spent on government schools last year even though that spending was itself a record. The money spent by the previous government on failed border protection policies is clearly money that could be much better spent. It’s almost four times the cost of the massive infrastructure project that has upgraded the Pacific Highway from Port Macquarie to Coffs.
We simply cannot afford to waste billions of dollars correcting totally avoidable policy failures if we are to afford the services we need and want.