Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's that time of year again, isn't it? Isn't it terrific? During the last couple of weeks we've seen that we're at that point in the cycle. The Prime Minister's out and about. He's got his little fluoro vests on. He gets the yellow one, the orange one, the little hard hat. Sometimes you even get treated to the silly goggles. He pops up at building sites and construction sites. In fact, they don't actually have to be construction sites. You just need a bit of big, heavy machinery so it looks like you might be doing something. He trots around the country. He's announcing things again. Photo ops—that's what he's chasing. It's even caused a number of hashtags to trend on Twitter: #ScottieFromMarketing, #ScottieFromPhotoOps, and a few others that are not parliamentary, so we won't be mentioning them.

I'm mindful, as always, of the standing orders, and I'm not allowed to call the Prime Minister a liar here in the parliament. It sounds like 'flyer', so I'll choose my words carefully. It would be hard to pick the biggest untruth out of this government's promises. But, if we're going for a medal, infrastructure might not win the gold medal, but it's certainly a medal contender. They're in their ninth year. Every year you get the same rubbish spin, budget after budget. Their budgets are full of untruths about infrastructure. We get the big announcements every budget: 'We're going to spend five trillion, bazillion, gazillion, jillion, gajillion dollars on infrastructure! It's going to be terrific.' Then you get the questions in question time. Up they pop, the National Party ministers—because, really, the Prime Minister sees infrastructure as a plaything for the National Party—announcing things. But, when the cameras are away, when people aren't looking, what happens? Not much.

After eight years, in their ninth year, $7.4 billion of the infrastructure they announced was not delivered on time. That means fewer roads, fewer public transport upgrades, longer commutes and productivity impacts that impact the real economy of the country. That's because the government announce stuff, but they don't build it. Last financial year—a $656 million underspend.

When called out the Prime Minister does two things. He denies it. He pretends it's not true. He just keeps saying the same old stuff—never mind those pesky things called budget papers, where they publish the numbers and you can get them out, line them up and add them up with a calculator and work out what they've actually done. Never let the facts get in the way of the Prime Minister's spin. He also blames someone else. He famously blamed international students, remember? If you couldn't get a spot on the freeway or get a seat on the train, it wasn't because the government over there failed to invest in the infrastructure that Australians needed; it was somehow because of the international students—the same students that he told the universities to go and recruit after he cut $2.2 billion from their funding. But then apparently they got too many. The other thing he does is he always blames state governments. When caught out down in Frankston recently, 'Why haven't you built the rail line you promised?' he said, 'It's the state government's fault.' 'But you promised it.' 'No, it's the state government's fault.' It's only Labor state governments, of course. But Australians suffer the consequences, and it has real economic impacts.

The only thing worse than underspends and doing nothing is when they actually do things. They see infrastructure as an opportunity to rort and pork-barrel. 'How good's infrastructure! Billions of dollars of taxpayer money we can shovel off to Liberal party marginal seats.' The Urban Congestion Fund—they announced $4.8 billion three years ago. They've only spent $550 million. It's another mirage of an announcement. But, goodness me, they've rorted it. Eighty-three per cent went to Liberal Party seats or target seats. The Commuter Car Park Fund—87 per cent went to coalition or target seats. Not one of the 47 projects was listed or recommended by the department, and the project selection process only involved canvassing Liberal MPs and candidates. Rort, rort, rort. I presume it's unparliamentary to snort like a pig to make the point about pork-barrelling, so I won't do that either. Ten commuter carparks were not even attached to a train station, such is their marginal-seat-pork-barrelling brilliance.

But nowhere suffers more than Victoria. The Prime Minister hates Victoria. He never misses a chance to bag us. He took our vaccines in the pandemic. He abandoned our businesses. He discriminated against us. And now it's infrastructure. Every capital city in Australia has a City Deal, except Victoria. Melbourne has no City Deal. Every other capital city does. Before the last election though, he was down in south-east Melbourne like a serial pest promising things, sucking up to people, 'You'll have a City Deal!' What's happened in the 2½ years since? Nothing. He hasn't been seen since. That means 1½ million to two million people in south-east Melbourne suffer longer commutes, our employment centres are not getting the road upgrades they need, there's no planning for the future south-east Melbourne airport and agricultural industries are not getting recycled water. This guy is a scammer!

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