George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion notes the importance of investing in local communities to assist them in meeting future challenges and seizing future opportunities. That is very commendable indeed. But the motion then goes on to talk about funding commitments under the Regional Development Australia Fund. What it does not mention is the term 'unfunded Labor election promises', which is exactly what these so-called Regional Development Australia funding commitments, made during the election campaign, actually were.

With all due respect to the previous speaker, the member for Indi, the Regional Development Australia Fund was anything but well established and anything but respected in the community. In fact, both from my local RDA and from local councils the response has been that it was chaotic, that it was inconsistent, that every round was different and that councils and applicants simply did not know what the rules were when they went to apply. That was the experience of local organisations and local councils and indeed the feedback from my local RDA.

I note that the motion claims rounds 5 and 5B of the RDA Fund were announced and budgeted. Well, that is half right. Projects were announced; they were announced during the middle of an election campaign. Along with making their various other announcements, Labor also tried to claim that these were not election promises and that the projects were 'already funded' or 'already in the budget'. For example, in my electorate the Labor candidate issued a press release on 19 August 2013, two weeks after the election had been called—well and truly into caretaker mode—with this promise:

A re-elected Rudd Labor Government will provide federal funding towards the upgrade of Whitsunday Coast Airport …

Labor's press release then goes on to put a caveat on this $10 million promise, saying that the federal government's commitment was contingent upon the Whitsunday Regional Council providing the required additional funding. Well, the required additional funding, according to the original application, was a further $5 million. So not only was it an election promise; it was an election promise with a huge caveat—one that would have seen a $290 increase in rates bills across the Whitsundays.

But wait. Labor's press release then goes on to make this claim about their promise: that the commitment would have been delivered through the government's Regional Development Australia Fund and was already included in the budget. Well, I looked through the budget for this and many other announcements, and they were not in the budget at all. There was no line item in the budget that announced $10 million for the Whitsunday airport or any of the other programs or projects funded through the RDA. There was not even a mention in a media release that these programs were going to be funded. Just like all of these Labor promises, there were no line items, no mention in the budget. If those opposite were so convinced about funding these projects, they would have made the deal earlier and they would have had it in the budget—or at least in a press release that came out when the budget was delivered only three months earlier.

So what changed in those three months? We had another sitting Labor Prime Minister knifed in the back. We had bad polling by the government at the time—bad enough to knife the Prime Minister and run around the country making spur-of-the-moment election promises, trying to pass them off as already funded projects that were in the budget. That just does not cut it, and neither did their promise to fund a library in the northern beaches and Mackay. It was another project that was contingent on funding from local government. But this so-called second coming of the Rudd government also promised funding for this northern beaches library just four days before calling the election. Only two months earlier they brought down their budget, and that was not mentioned in it. It was not even mentioned in a press release emanating from the budget.

So it is quite clear that these were election commitments. In fact, I spoke to the then Deputy Prime Minister about them, and he told me that the advice from the head of the department was that these were being treated by the department as election promises by the Labor Party. You cannot get more impartial advice than that, and that was the advice from the department.

I will be encouraging all my local councils, and I would ask the mover of the motion and the member for Indi and all others to encourage their councils, to reapply for these projects through a proper program that we will establish, called Stronger Regions. It will be available in 2015, and it will not be some fairytale pot of money that is linked to a mining tax that is not actually raising anything. It will be a proper program—real funding. That is what responsible governments do; that is what grown-up governments do. What this motion comes down to is a scorned Labor Party upset because its election promises are not being delivered by us on this side. We would not require them to deliver our election promises if they were elected and they should not require us to do it either.

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