ADJOURNMENT
Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (19:40): Last week was the National General Assembly of the Australian Local Government Association, and almost a quarter of my 47 local government authorities made the 3,000-kilometre trek to Canberra. For many, it was a chance to network and share information with their peers. For others, it was an opportunity to raise serious local issues with ministers and their shadow counterparts and offer solutions to problems common to regional Australia.
I give a shout-out to the cities of Albany and Kalgoorlie-Boulder, the northern Goldfields shires of Laverton and Menzies, the remote shires of Ngaanyatjarraku and Dundas and the Wheatbelt shires of Bruce Rock, Narembeen, Lake Grace, Corrigan and Ravensthorpe. It was great to welcome you all to Canberra, facilitate your meetings and hopefully secure some positive outcomes.
The Roe Regional Organisation of Councils, or RoeROC, is an alliance of my Wheatbelt shires of Corrigin, Kondinin, Kulin, Narembeen and Wickepin. They're collaborating to address the common challenges of severe housing shortages, which prevent employers from attracting and retaining essential workers—from healthcare and childcare staff to teachers, local government employees and agricultural workers.
Through their proposed Key Worker Housing Project, RoeROC have developed a practical, locally led solution to deliver affordable workforce housing in communities where private development is not financially viable. They are calling on the state and federal Labor governments to support place based funding models and provide targeted co-investment to bridge the regional housing viability gap.
Under the previous coalition government, there were targeted regional infrastructure programs, like the Building Better Regions Fund, which enabled O'Connor shire councils to build seniors residential villages, long-term and seasonal worker accommodation and tourism infrastructure. Funding has dried up under this city-centric Labor government. And it's not just my small O'Connor councils who are being stymied by federal government funding constraints.
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder Water Bank Project is a staged water security initiative designed to increase the capacity to capture stormwater, recycle wastewater and expand water storage, reducing reliance on the century-old Goldfields long-distance water supply network. Building on the city's existing infrastructure, this project will create new storage dams, upgrade treatment facilities and improve water transfer systems and water-saving technologies.
As part of the Australia-wide Mining Cities Alliance, the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder was here advocating for federal infrastructure funding to address residential housing shortages that see Goldfields workers living long term in hotels, caravans and camps. The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a thriving mining hub located on the edge of the desert. It needs water infrastructure not only to support industry but for the entire community to thrive and grow.
The Local Government Rural Health Funding Alliance brings together six O'Connor Wheatbelt shires facing the same health challenge: how to maintain health services in small rural communities where patient numbers are too low to support a GP practice under existing Commonwealth funding models. The shires of Lake Grace, Gnowangerup, Jerramungup, Ravensthorpe, Narembeen and Kojonup collectively contribute more than $1.4 million from ratepayers every year, as well as providing housing, vehicles and medical facilities, to attract and retain doctors.
These costs can amount to up to 16 per cent of a shire's annual rate base. This innovative alliance is advocating for targeted Commonwealth action to address these thin market conditions, including a dedicated pilot funding program for MM6 and MM7 communities, tailored sustainability payments for rural GP services and reforms to existing incentives so that there is equity between the health services offered in the city and services for those living in the bush.
To this end, the alliance hosted their own information and advocacy session during ALGA week, attracting over 30 like-minded councils. They plan to build a national alliance to secure sustainable health funding for the bush so small local governments would no longer carry the financial burden for this Commonwealth responsibility. Another innovative shire president is Patrick Hill of the Shire of Laverton, and he's the founding chair of the Outback Highway Development Council—something very close to your heart, Deputy Speaker Scrymgour.
Together with the northern Goldfields shires of Menzies and Ngaanyatjarraku, they were in Canberra to launch the Outback Way Action Plan here in Parliament House last week. Pat reported the good news that the 2,700-kilometre bituminisation of the trans-Australian route linking Laverton to Winton in western Queensland is almost complete in all but my electorate of O'Connor, where 760 kilometres of gravel remains.
Elsewhere along the Outback Way, the focus is moving to social, cultural and economic development, but, sadly, the WA Labor government is dragging its feet delivering this long-term road infrastructure. For every year this funding goes unspent, the cost of the road-build grows, leaving the visionary stakeholders like Pat watching their 28-year dream drift away from reality.