Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

No hope, no solutions—that's the summary of this week's budget: no hope, no solutions, no grand plan, no great vision, no statement of where we're going and no great vision to get behind. But there are also a number of great disappointments in the budget this week. The first great disappointment, unfortunately not a surprise, was the $9.6 billion ripped out of regional grant programs. That doesn't surprise us, and it's also an insult. The Labor party want to call Nationals MPs, of which I'm a very proud one, pork-barrellers. That's not an insult to me. That's not an insult to a Nationals MP; that is an insult to every community member of every regional community around this country, because what the Labor Party are saying is that those communities and those people are not worthy recipients of the infrastructure spending that we've been given, whether it be sporting upgrades, cultural upgrades, roads or bridges. We're not worthy because it's pork-barrelling. Mind you, it's not pork-barrelling, apparently, to give $2 billion to a rail project in Melbourne.

The other great disappointments that have been well mentioned include $275. It's not $275 down, Speaker. Do you know what it is? It's $1,000 up. That's what the commitment is. The promise was something different. There are higher mortgage payments. The theme was: no hope, no program. (Time expired)

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