And the bush properly so called I suppose does encapsulate our idea of people who live in small communities, many of whom are suffering the ravages of low commodity prices, and drought and all the difficulty that afflicts those communities. But the outer metropolitan areas of Australia, although the scale and the dimension of the challenge is different nonetheless have particular needs and particular challenges. The need to provide infrastructure services, the need to provide additional police and hospital services. I was talking to the, I think the correct expression is district inspector, well that's what I would have called it when I was at public school in Sydney all those years ago, and she was describing to me the challenges of some 43 or 44 schools, primary schools in this area which has a young population. And I know how important the provision of education is for a growing community and that's one of the reasons why at a federal level we have endeavoured to provide the optimum level of choice for people in education.
Education is very important to every Australian family.
Providing people with the choice whether they send their children to government schools or non-government schools, and increasingly to provide people with choice within the government sector. As I drove past the large number of new housing estates it's a reminder to me of the importance I suppose of keeping interest rates at a tolerable level. And I'm constantly reminded of Mal just how important it is to keep interest rates as low as possible. And I'm very very pleased to say that one of the things that we have been able to do, and I don't want to make this a very political address, but I can't you know, resist one tiny commercial, one tiny plug. One of the things that we have been able to do very effectively is to get interest rates down from stratospheric levels that they were at some 8 or 10 years ago.