Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I think this might be the first time we've had an Acting Prime Minister doing consideration in detail, and I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister on his elevation to high office. We never quite know what we're going to get when you're in the role—yesterday it was mice—so we'll see what we get today.

Thank you very much for the outline of the budget. I've got a few questions that I'd like to ask you. The first is a pretty simple one. Maths wasn't my strong point but I didn't do too badly at it at school. When you announced—I think it was in MYEFO, or it might have been in the last budget—that there was an additional $10 billion going into your $100 billion infrastructure program, you started talking about the infrastructure program being $110 billion. So that money got added in and we accepted that; you've now got a $110 billion infrastructure program. We may quibble about what you count as new money and all those things, but that's fine. But just before the budget you did a whole series of splashes on the Monday, and I think there was an extra $15 billion. So how come the infrastructure budget is now not $125 billion? You're not saying that, because the reality is you're the first infrastructure minister in a while to actually have a cut to your budget. The reality of the budget papers is that you've had a cut to your budget, which is pretty embarrassing for an infrastructure minister and Acting Prime Minister. It's there in the budget papers: $3.3 billion over the next four years has been taken out of your portfolio for infrastructure. You've made this big claim that you've got this extra $15 billion of new money coming in. Somehow or other there's this magic pudding that's suddenly shrinking, because it's not $125 billion, as you'd expect if you're adding more money to the program, but still $110 billion—and it's actually less than that. We now understand that it is in fact a rolling program, which basically means there are things coming in and things coming out. So this whole notion of $110 billion is a myth.

Let me go to the budget, particularly in terms of the cut. I know the Acting Prime Minister will say, 'There's no cut here.' That's what happens whenever there are cuts in the budget; I've seen it happen time and time again when I had Health for the last six years. But on page 84 of Budget Paper No. 1 it says:

the government's main bucket for infrastructure—

which are expected to decrease by $188.7 million in 2020-21 ($3.3 billion over the four years to 2023-24), largely reflecting a re-profile of program funding to align with the delivery of project milestones.

I have been a cabinet minister. I have presided over parts of budgets being developed and I know exactly what that means. It means you are the first infrastructure minister in over a decade to actually have a cut to your budget. You should be very proud of that! In simple language, this means the government is failing to deliver on its promises in terms of infrastructure over the next four years. Acting Prime Minister, how have you let that happen? You call it a rolling pipeline because the reality is that these promises kept rolling off the end into the never-never. They are cuts, pure and simple.

We know there is an underspend on infrastructure, year on year. Each and every year it's an average of $1.2 billion, but last year it was $1.7 billion. In a year when hundreds of thousands of Australians have lost their jobs, frankly, you reached new heights in being unable to actually deliver. We wait to see how much the underspend will be in the 2020-21 financial year, and it would be terrific if the Acting Prime Minister could give us a hint as to what that might be.

Mr McCormack interjecting—

I have excellent hearing too, by the way. Why is it that the government continuously breaks its promises when it comes to infrastructure spending?

Why is it that you make the same big promises time and time again, always looking for the headline, but actually fail to deliver? Most of the projects that you have delivered are projects that Labor announced in our time in office. Go up there, cut the ribbon—we know how that works. Why is it that you've presided over a cut to your budget, and why are you so proud of that?

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