Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak as a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government today to discuss the second report on funding regional and local community infrastructure, which was released earlier this month. I very much enjoyed the work of this committee. I think we were very well led by Catherine King, and having the member for Hinkler, Paul Neville, with his 16 years of service to this committee and its predecessors, on the committee gives a wealth of historical context to the work that we are currently doing.

I would just like to respond to a couple of things that the member for Canning had to say during his contribution just finished. He opened up talking about the area consultative committees and Regional Development Australia. This is not the time or the place for that debate. In fact, during the committee hearings and processes, we understood that this was not the time and or place for that debate, and yet, time after time, ACC witnesses appeared before us, seemingly more interested in saving their own necks than in coming up with a program of grant funding to help develop their communities. The transitioning from ACC to RDA is in progress. It is a government decision, not something that has been brought about by this committee or, quite frankly, something that this committee can influence in a major way at all. What I understand the government is doing is trying to harmonise across Australia all of the different regional development priorities—whether they be at state government or local authority level, or even developed by development associations—so that they are combining but not competing.

The member for Canning spoke about the late unlamented Regional Partnerships program. Nobody ever said—as he claimed—that it was all bad. In fact, a lot of good work happened in the Regional Partnerships program. But it was open to abuse and it was abused quite widely. I suggest to anybody listening to this debate or reading it later in Hansard that they should go to the transcript of the committee hearings in Cairns on 25 July last year and read the words of the member for Kennedy, the Hon. Bob Katter, who probably represents as big a chunk of regional Australia as any member in this place. He was most disgusted by the way the Regional Partnerships program had been developed. In fact, the only way he could see out of the problem was to divide the money allocated each year by 150 and allow that amount to be spent in each of the 150 electorates. Obviously, we have not followed that advice, but he was most vociferous in his understanding that the program was rorted outrageously.

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