Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The Dysart community hall. The minister asked me to identify one. They applied, they were knocked back and then Labor decided to fund it. Surprise, surprise! It is in a Labor electorate. What about the fishing grants in Gippsland? It was very interesting to see the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry going to Gippsland to announce $11 million worth of projects, none of which is going through the Prime Minister’s alleged examination process. None of them has been through the three steps. Some of those projects, incidentally, did go through a departmental analysis, and they were rejected. They were not approved. But, instead, Labor are going to go ahead and fund those particular projects. Those projects that Labor are about to fund are probably worth while and are probably meritorious, but so were the 116 they rejected and which have now come back. Many of the Labor projects will do worthwhile things in their local communities, but are they more worthy than the other projects that they had rejected? Or have they been chosen for one reason and one reason only—they were in Labor electorates? They were in electorates Labor wanted to win and they were so desperate that they were prepared to create their own regional program just to fund these schemes.

This is another extraordinary thing about what the Labor Party did with their 105 pork-barrelling projects. They created a special program called Better Regions, and the only projects to be funded under the Better Regions program are the 105 that Labor announced before the election. The program did not exist before the election; it will not exist in the future. No-one else can apply for a project under Better Regions; only the Labor rorters could apply for funding under this particular program. This is a special program designed to be immune from the standards of governance that the Labor Party said were important for the Regional Partnerships program. These projects have not been through the three-stage examination. The minister has now written to some suggesting that they will have to go through some kind of an application process, but that is contrary to what the Prime Minister said. The Prime Minister has said, ‘All of these projects will be funded.’ Senator Conroy repeated it in Senate estimates a couple of days ago. All these projects will be funded, irrespective of whether they meet the criteria, whether they are the most meritorious or whether there are other projects that would have ranked higher if they had been subjected to any kind of proper analysis.

This is a rort—it is pork-barrelling on a grand scale. It is an exclusive slush fund for Labor Party marginal electorates. It is a scandal, and it is a scandal particul-arly because the person who has been orchestrating it, conducting the orchestra, is the one who has been critical of previous programs. If he had a degree of honesty in his body he would certainly have been crying out against this Labor rort scheme and he would be refusing to have anything to do with it. But instead he is actually the king of the rorts scandal, including the famous Fort Street rort—$14½ million for soundproofing a school in his own electorate. The minister only funded one school: a school in his own electorate—not the schools in Kurnell or other places around Sydney where there are noise and issues associated with aircraft movements. There is no funding for schools in Adelaide or for schools in country communities or in cities where trucks have to go up hills and are probably noisier than at the Fort Street school. One school has been chosen for this particular program, and it is in the electorate of the minister, who claims he is bringing honesty to regional programs and yet has put $14 million into his own electorate.

His justification for this was that it was promised in four or five election campaigns. Ironically, the Fraser Island world heritage centre was promised in four elections, and yet Labor calls that a rort. So, if in another electorate something is promised in three or four elections and the Labor Party and the state governments are not prepared to put in their contribution and the project is axed, then that is a rort. But, if it is a state school, where the state is supposed to provide the facilities and the funding, in the minister’s electorate, that is a legitimate use of government money. The reality is that the minister is the king of the rorters. The language that he has used to describe small community groups that have not enjoyed the largesse that is being handed out in the minister’s own electorate is a disgrace.

The reality is that Labor have been all froth and bubble and no substance. They are loud in their criticism, but they have invented their own Better Regions program. The only better regions are Labor regions, and Labor is providing huge funding for selected electorates just for electoral purposes. That is what rorting is about, and this minister should be ashamed of himself. (Time expired)

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