Calare

Regional areas such as Calare face unprecedented pressure as the population ages.

We will need a dramatic increase in infrastructure funding so our towns and cities can cope with the changes this will bring, and will remain pleasant and easy places for older Australians to live.

Government policy should encourage and deliver, where possible, affordable, comfortable and well-maintained retirement and aged care accommodation.

Developers and providers of retirement accommodation must meet all existing government requirements, as well as be required to provide transition accommodation options for residents who may require low or high care facilities, in the future.

These transition options must be on, or adjacent to, the existing retirement estate.

Funding mechanisms for aged care need to be overhauled to be fairer and more effective.

With regional communities across the country, including in Calare, suffering the effects of the manufacture and abuse of crystal methamphetamine (street name “Ice”), we must do more to protect our families from this destructive drug.

We need more funding for fully resourced and effective treatment centres across Calare.

The Nick Xenophon Team policy also includes allowing relatives of substance abusers should have the right to seek intervention for their loved ones.

And a no-nonsense, effective approach to educating young people of the risk of substance abuse, including alcohol. 

The Calare region has seen, or is seeing many hundreds of jobs lost during the term of this current government, including –

• 500 workers from Electrolux Orange due to the closure of the whitegoods factory
• 90 staff when The EDI Downer manufacturing plant in Bathurst closed down
• Hundreds shed from the Cadia mine workforce as construction work finished 
• More than 200 people lost their jobs when the Wallarawang Power Station near Lithgow closed in early 2015.

There’s more across the region, but you get the picture.

The key to future employment in Calare is a healthy small and medium enterprise sector.

The Nick Xenophon Team supports this with policies based around targeted tax breaks for the first two years of operation, and payroll tax exemption for businesses with up to 20 full-time equivalent employees.

Local family farm businesses also need the protections that would be provided by clear and proper country of origin labelling laws.

And the major parties have squibbed on an 'effects test', as recommended by an independent review, which would give small and medium businesses the right to take on big businesses that engage in predatory and bullying behaviour. I will fight for real reform in this area, because would create more jobs.

I fully support the joint proposal by Charles Sturt University and La Trobe to establish the Murray Darling Medical School in Orange, Wagga Wagga and Bendigo.

I believe the requested $46 million in federal funding over 4 years, to help with initial capital costs, would be a shrewd investment.

Sally’s Flat between Hill End and Sofala has been short listed in the final 6 as a proposed site for a low and intermediate nuclear waste storage facility.

I reject the proposal completely for a range of reasons, including a lack of an acceptable road between Calare and Sydney and in particular that linking the Great Western Highway to the Sally’s Flat area. The region is also very well populated. Important waterways and storages are located in the area. It is close to prime agricultural land.

I will stand firmly against a proposal to store nuclear waste in the Calare electorate.

By refusing to build the long proposed 4 lane “Bells Line Expressway” across the Blue Mountains, successive governments have ignored the needs and wishes of locals.

 The lack of first world road links between Calare and Sydney restricts economic trade, tourism and the potential for new residents to be tempted to make the move.

We should have the same access to Sydney as residents from North and South of the state capital have – a minimum 100 kilometre per hour expressway.

And we all know the state of the highways and other roads in the Calare area are not good enough.

I will fight for federal road funding for our electorate and for the benefit of the wider central west region.

I support the network of pipelines currently being planned or built across the region to link several different water supplies and storages.

We should re-visit the idea of expanding Lake Rowlands from its current 4.500 megalitre capacity to 26000 megalitres, or more, to ensure Irrigators, Central Tablelands Water, and Orange can all share in the asset.

I do not support the proposed new “Cranky Rock” Dam. I am deeply concerned that it will badly diminish both the Belubula and Lachlan River’s, and could destroy the world significant Cliefden Caves network.

Maximise the use of storm-water harvesting in Orange, something that Nick has championed for years in Canberra.