Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance. I condemn this government and this minister for their abandonment of rural and regional Australia. Today we have learnt that rural and regional Australia has become a sort of plaything of the Labor Party and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. In recent months Labor and the minister for infrastructure have lectured this House hour upon hour, week in and week out about their view that something was wrong with the Regional Partnerships program, that they thought that the previous government had pork-barrelled, that the projects put forward across Australia in the interests of regional people were somehow no good.

After weeks and months of lecturing, hysterical comments and laughter we have learnt today that there was a problem with this minister’s ongoing complaints and that the much hyped Better Regions program has an ever greater problem. It is a problem which is now apparent to all Australians in rural and regional Australia. We now know that this minister is refusing to release a full list of the 105 projects promised by the Labor Party, which had no scrutiny prior to the last election. We now know why he will not release them. It is because Labor and this minister are pork-barrelling on a scale that could never have been imagined by any previous government. We learnt today that 90 per cent of the $150 million in regional grants announced by Labor during the last election campaign will go to Labor held or Labor targeted marginal electorates. All but five of these seats, we learnt from the Australian today, went on to be won by the Labor Party. This is the minister who has come in here every day in a show of mock outrage about the so-called previous level of funding of 72 per cent that was identified in the Australian National Audit Office report into the Regional Partnerships program. His outrage was so strong and so over-the-top it was clear that this minister had to be hiding something. Today we know what this government has been hiding.

The minister talks about process. In light of the revelations that Labor and the minister for infrastructure and regional development have a pork-barrelling plan, which they have labelled Better Regions, how do those promises stack up so far with party representation in Australia? I say to anyone listening to the broadcast of these proceedings that if Labor represents 90 per cent of rural areas in this country, or even if it were 50 per cent or 40 per cent, then maybe this massive pork-barrelling exercise promised at the last election could be justified—the Better Regions program could be justified. But the AEC records show that, under the Regional Partnerships program in the last parliament, 90 per cent of rural seats in parliament were held by non-Labor members. The ANAO found that 72.5 per cent of funding was directed at coalition held seats in a parliament where 90 per cent of rural seats were held by the coalition.

Today we know that the level of funding to Labor electorates under the Better Regions program is 90 per cent. And what is the proportion of Labor held rural seats in the new parliament? Just 31 per cent, 13 seats. So 90 per cent of funding under the Better Regions program was for 31 per cent of the seats. How can this flow of money be justified? How can this minister show his face at the dispatch box today after these embarrassing and damaging revelations? The minister for infrastructure and regional development remarked in this House:

We are ... consulting widely ... to ensure that the mismanagement of previous programs does not occur. We want to get this right.

Well, I bet they do! I bet the minister does want to ‘get this right’. One way to get this right would be to stop directing funds into Labor held and Labor targeted electorates and recognise that 69 per cent of the members of this parliament in rural areas are non-Labor members. We are supposed to believe that so-called ‘new guidelines’ are going to help this process. The minister for infrastructure and regional develop-ment told us today that new guidelines are being drafted. I bet they are being drafted. I bet they are being drafted in a hurry and the government are going to try to justify the unprecedented levels of pork-barrelling and maladministration of government programs.

We are supposed to believe that this minister does not believe in blank cheques, as he told the Australian today, that somehow not all of the promised funding would meet these ‘new’ guidelines. But there is one small problem with that claim: someone forgot to tell the deputy Labor leader in the Senate, Senator Conroy, about this new process. Senator Conroy dutifully held the line in Senate estimates that all Better Regions promises would be met. He even revealed that this instruction to fund these grants had come from the Prime Minister himself. Senator Conroy was quoted as saying in estimates: ‘As the Prime Minister has said, we will be keeping all our election commitments.’ There you have it, Mr Deputy Speaker: all of those election commitments will be funded, according to the Prime Minister via Senator Conroy—all of the 90 per cent in Labor held or targeted electorates.

This minister came into the House and told us on 15 May that he was concerned about the independence of the process, that we should never repeat the so-called ‘mistakes of the past’. The hypocrisy is breathtaking: in one breath to criticise and feign outrage and in the other breath to go ahead and do the very thing you have been complaining about worse that anyone has ever attempted before. The maladministration of this minister’s portfolio is absolutely breathtaking. Minister Albanese lamented further in this House on 15 May 2008:

In our view, the Regional Partnerships program was run so badly that it was beyond repair.

Further, he told the House that he had referred the matter to the House of Representatives committee to inquire into. The program was apparently so bad that Minister Albanese has been forced, under pressure from the coalition, to reinstate 86 of the 116 previously approved Regional Partnerships projects. He knows the worth of these projects. His backdown on this matter shows that he understands that the Regional Partnerships program did have merit and did provide real benefits to communities across Australia. These local communities have been treated with contempt by this government. Regional communities are not political footballs for this government to play with. These are real projects that affect real people’s lives, and this government’s toying with those communities is absolutely breathtaking.

Before the election Labor said it would be keeping the Regional Partnerships program. Then in the budget Labor said the entire program was to go and none of the 116 would get any money whatsoever. So imagine you are one of these communities or had one of these programs lined up under the previous government and on budget night you were listening to the budget appropriations speech and saw that your program was to go. But then, under pressure from the shadow minister and the coalition, Minister Albanese changed his mind. How did he change his mind? We now know that Minister Albanese rang a television show host to tell him that he had had a change of heart. That is the new standard of administration of policy in this government: policy that is made for television. Will it look good on television or will it not look good on television? All those communities across Australia that should be watching this should understand that, if you want to achieve a result from this government, plan to have it go on TV and you will get a response in policy priority.

The minister for infrastructure and regional development has taken the lessons from the budget where he has pork-barrelled for his own electorate. My electorate of Mitchell missed out on funding for a new metro line in one of the fastest growing, infrastructure deprived areas of Sydney. It lost the funding to a major new metro line for the inner city of Sydney which duplicates existing heavy rail services. So I have a question. Where would you think this new metro line, this major piece of infrastructure that will run from Parramatta to the city, will be? Whose electorate will get that new metro line which duplicates an existing heavy rail line service in the inner city of Sydney? I am here to tell this House it is in the electorate of the member for Grayndler, the minister for infrastructure and regional development. This minister is carving up the pork, he is putting it in the barrel and he is rolling it down the new metro line from Parramatta, past Fort Street High School, all the way to the city, at the expense of rural and regional Australia. The minister ought to come in here and apologise to those members of the National Party that he has pilloried for the last six months. He ought to have some shame and back down on his outrageous accusations of pork-barrelling by the previous government in light of the serious and credible information released today.

This minister is fond of quoting his favourite audit report and calling its author the ‘Nationals’ Audit Office. I am here today to say to this House that it is no longer the Australian ‘Nationals’ Audit Office, as the minister is fond of saying. Let the ANAO conduct an audit into this new pork-barrelling and let it now be renamed the Australian Albanese Audit Office.

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