Mallee residents will at long last drive on better roads, have better health care services and families will have better access to childcare thanks to The Nationals - in coalition with the Liberals - delivering a Regional Australia Future Fund if elected to government on the 3^rd of May.

“On Budget night in late March I said ‘Labor has squandered the rivers of gold of resources and income tax revenue while delivering no meaningful productivity reform.  Regional Australia has missed out tonight with no new funding for the Stronger Communities program, Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program, Growing Regions program or the Regional Precincts and Partnership program, critical to building community infrastructure in regional Australia.’  Regional Australians will receive the investment they deserve under a Dutton-Littleproud Coalition Government,” Dr Webster said.

“Mallee residents in the many communities large and small across the electorate’s 83,412 km² I visited this last week at mobile offices consistently raised the dangerous and appalling state of our roads.  They feel powerless and at the mercy of the Albanese and Allan Labor governments who ignore them. I am thrilled to tell them today, that will change under a Coalition government.”

A Coalition Government will direct 80 per cent of commodity revenue windfalls into two new Future Funds to pay down Labor’s $1.2 trillion debt bill and fund investments in regional Australia.  The Coalition will establish the Regional Australia Future Fund and a Future Generations Fund.

“Critically, the two funds will not be financed through new debt – as Labor are doing – and instead be sustained by real windfall revenue, bolstering the federal balance sheet and reducing net debt,” Dr Webster said.

“The Coalition’s debt-busting, nation-building funds will lower debt and therefore ease pressure on inflation and interest rates – thus improve our cost of living, support strategic infrastructure, boost investment and productivity, and strengthen regional economies by creating jobs and creating incentives outside capital cities,”

The announcement builds on the Coalition’s strong record of economic management including the success of the Coalition’s 2006 Future Fund (now with over $300 billion in managed assets), which now includes the Coalition’s 2015 Medical Research Future Fund which has funded significant advances in developing cures and treatments, now with over $23 billion in managed assets.  The Coalition also established the Future Drought Fund in 2019 which now manages over $4 billion, enabling $100 million in grants and programs to be made to regional Australians every year.

“Labor has abolished infrastructure programs that were established to assist regional Australia’s freight task including Roads of Strategic Importance, the Bridges Renewal Program and the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program,” Dr Webster said.

“Only a Coalition Government has the back of the nine million Australians who live outside capital cities and that is also why we have promised to restore the 80 per cent Commonwealth funding rule for all new regional road projects from the first day we are elected, and committed $600 million on the nation’s agricultural and mining roads.”

Dr Webster told Parliament on Budget Day, 26 March: “As this engorged government feasts on your income, using it to spend on largesse that exacerbates the cost-of-living crisis, Labor tosses Australians a daily morsel of their tax back. This is a government swimming in income tax revenue, not to mention mineral resources revenue. The jackpot machine of the Australian success story is spitting out chips, but Labor is letting it all go down the drain of debt, deficit and bloated public spending.”

“The Coalition in government will direct a significant proportion of commodities revenue back to the regions where it came from, rewarding our regional powerhouses that generate wealth for all Australians,” Dr Webster said today. 

“The Regional Australia Future Fund will mark the end of Labor robbing regions to buy votes in the inner cities.  Labor lords it over our farmers like feudal lords, treating farmers like peasant serfs and taking away their land rights.  Only a Coalition government will stand up for regional Australia, our primary producers and regional communities that have had their lives put at risk by Labor’s scorched earth approach to regional Australia.”