Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

In March this year, the finance minister was quoted by AAP as saying that the government debt burden kept him awake at night. In March of this year, the government debt burden was already keeping the finance minister awake. Since that time he has been part of a government that has continued to borrow $2 billion a week. This minister must be pacing endlessly around his room in the evenings now, because the debt continues to grow. And, unlike what was said in the intervention from the previous speaker, the reality is that Labor has no plan whatsoever to ever pay that money back. The finance minister has good reason to be sleepless every night. Yet he is a part of a government that continues to go out and spend, spend, spend.

Indeed, the only criteria for choosing spending projects when the government was designing its stimulus package was: ‘How fast can we get the money out the door? It doesn’t matter where it goes, so long as it goes.’ This was an irresponsible approach to financial management. There was no feasibility study, no investment plan and no discussion about the relative merits of projects, just ‘Let’s get it all out the door.’ Indeed, billions of dollars went out, on simple formulas, to schools that were under a particular size or over a particular size. The fact that a school may have been slated for closure did not stop it being funded. The fact that there may have been only one student did not mean that he could not have a $250,000 library. I do not know how many books he is going to have to share amongst himself! This is the kind of stimulus package that this government has said we should be supporting.

The Prime Minister said before the election that he was a fiscal conservative and that he would stop the reckless spending of the Howard government. Yet he has been out there spending, spending, spending, without any comprehension of the value and the worth of projects that are being funded. Today in the Australian Financial Review we saw further evidence of the way in which this government is spending its money. It is clearly devoted not to stimulating the economy but to stimulating Labor’s electoral chances in their marginal seats. If you look through the spending in relation to many of these local discretionary programs, the hand of the minister for regional development, Mr Albanese, is very clear. The Labor marginal seats, particularly in New South Wales, have been slated for extra-generous attention.

In his pathetic attempt to try and justify it today, the minister dragged in other spending programs to try and reduce the starkness of this spending focus on Labor electorates. In Victoria, Labor electorates received $100 million compared with just $57 million in coalition seats. In New South Wales, Eden-Monaro, the famous bellwether seat at election time, gets $4.4 million. Bennelong, a seat narrowly held by the new member, gets $5.9 million. Swan, in Western Australia, gets $4.5 million for a seat Labor wants to win. And $9.1 million was spent to try and shore up the seat of Brand, which is one which is always going to be close to the line. That is how Labor chose where it would spend its money in relation to this stimulus package: in the marginal seats. Of course they have much form in relation to that. Remember, 82 per cent of Labor’s off-highway network roads program funding is going to Labor electorates. Almost 100 per cent of the funding for the Better Regions program has gone to Labor seats and to fulfil the promises made by Labor candidates at the last election.

If you do not live in a Labor seat, you cannot even apply for the money. It has already been spent, with 100 per cent of it going to Labor electorates. It is a rolled gold rort. We know it is a rort. This minister for regional development is devoting all of his efforts into funnelling and shovelling this money into seats held by his mates. But the reality is that this government has not carefully and properly managed its program. We are going to get about $10 billion worth of school buildings at a cost of $16 billion as billions are raked off the top for commissions to the state governments and to pay consultant fees that get no results. I visited a school the other day that expects to get $100,000 worth of painting and plastering out of a $200,000 grant. (Time expired)

See this speech in context