ADJOURNMENT

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (16:47): It was through Instagram that the then Labor candidate for Durack Karen Wheatland brought glad tidings to her followers in WA's Wheatbelt. Stuffed animal in hand, Ms Wheatland beamed as she announced that a re-elected Labor government would invest $5 million for a new childcare centre in Mukinbudin.

Excellent! There's a shortage of quality early childhood education centres in regional WA, and, while the Albanese government doesn't always honour its election commitments, if we've learned anything from the recent grants rorts saga, it's that this government honours its pork-barrelling commitments, right? Could it be that, like Ms Wheatland's Instagram account, this commitment was abandoned immediately after the election?

I tried to use Labor's broken FOI system to see if there was anything more I could learn about the progress on this commitment. The only new document they'd released was a brief to the minister from May. The single line dedicated to Mukinbudin read, 'The department last met with the Shire of Mukinbudin in October 2025.' Then, in a meeting yesterday, the government told the shire that the election promise will not be honoured, due to a lack of demonstrated demand.

This is despite the minister describing the commitment, at estimates in February, as 'part of our building early childhood education fund that is building services in underserved areas'. So there's a lack of demand, but they're also 'underserved'. Make it make sense!

The Shire of Mukinbudin is being made an example of: 'You didn't elect our candidate, so you're not going to get to build the childcare centre.' I wonder if the PM's Marrickville Golf Club had any issues with getting their taxpayer funded non-competitive grant. This is just another example of this government's east coast bias. When it comes to election promises, they get the pork; we get the barrel.

I want to now finish off the speeches from young West Australians as part of the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign. Nineteen-year-old Jamie writes: 'I've always believed in optimism, but this is becoming harder by the day. Despite the scientific consensus and increasingly severe natural disasters, Australia continues to drag its feet on climate change.

The cost of inaction won't be measured in dollars but in lives. In an already volatile world, climate change acts as a threat multiplier. Modelling shows that over the next century we'll see tens of millions of premature deaths.

We are at the brink of the greatest tragedy in human history. The good news is that we already have the core technologies to address it. We just need the political will.

Decarbonisation won't be easy, so it's vital to seize the low-hanging fruit. An essential first step is to halt the approval of new fossil fuel projects. The IPCC, the IEA and the WHO could not have been clearer on this, but Australia hasn't got the memo.

I would like parliament to stop sitting on two chairs. It's time to legislate a nationwide ban on new coal and gas extraction projects. Australia has a legacy of baked-in fossil fuels, but now we have a chance to rewrite it.

We can prove to the world that this fight can be won.' Twenty-one-year-old Amelia writes: 'I know my life expectancy is only 79 years old, six years less than the average in Western Australia. I know I'm four times more likely to die in a car crash, three times more likely to die a medically avoidable death, two times more likely to die of heart failure. My future is fundamentally different, all because I grew up in and will return to regional Western Australia.

There is a divide between the regions and the cities, and this divide is only growing, swallowing the future of regional Australians. The common solution for this issue is, "Just relocate to the city." It isn't that simple. Regional areas of Australia are the backbone of this country.

We should have services which are on par with metropolitan areas. We shouldn't have to decide between living in a place we love or basic services. I ask parliament to consider regional Australia not just as an afterthought.

I ask you to invest in our infrastructure, support our education, our health care and our access to essential services. Our lives shouldn't be worth less simply because of where we live. I ask this parliament to invest in regional Australia and change our future.' I thank Jamie, Amelia and all the other young Western Australians for their dedication and their ideas and for sending those speeches to us, and I wish them all the very best.