Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

It is very hard to consider in detail the infrastructure budget, when there's so little to actually reflect on in the budget in terms of infrastructure. It was quite amazing to sit there and listen to the budget speech, when the Treasurer didn't actually mention the word 'infrastructure' once in his speech. I've been here for 15 years. I don't recall any Treasurer never actually mentioning the word 'infrastructure' in their budget speech. It's simply unheard of. I don't believe the Treasurer even mentioned the words 'roads' in his speech either, which is fascinating to me, coming from a rural and regional community, when roads and infrastructure are such critical issues in our communities.

I'm very concerned that this minister has hit the ground reviewing. It's 12 months after Labor winning the election, and her signature policies so far have been to announce a 90-day review of the Infrastructure Investment Program and at the same time to abolish one of the most successful programs in recent history, the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program. I had the chance to speak today at the Australian Local Government Association conference here in Canberra, and the support for that program, the LRCI program, was quite staggering. What this minister has done, what this Albanese government has done, has been to deliberately strip local decision-making power, taking power off local governments and centralising it back in Canberra. They don't want local government. They don't trust local government to set their own local priorities. This minister has actually wasted her first year in office and has so little to show for it, and the Treasurer didn't even mention the word 'infrastructure' in the budget speech because they're embarrassed by their failure to deliver.

As I travel around my electorate, I get to see some very significant infrastructure projects happening right now. There's the Princes Highway duplication and the Gippsland rail line upgrades. Every major infrastructure project occurring right now in Gippsland is only occurring because the previous federal government funded it and got on with the job. There is not a single new project that has started in my electorate in the last 12 months that this federal government has had anything to do with, but this doesn't stop Labor ministers from rushing around and getting out of the city whenever they can dash out, cut a ribbon and take credit for it. I have seen the Minister for Veterans' Affairs in Darwin cutting a ribbon on a new veterans' centre he had nothing to do with. I've had various senators in my electorate cutting ribbons at school on something they had nothing to do with. I love to see them, and it's great they get out of the city every now and again.

I want to refer specifically to the infrastructure review, which is more aptly called a razor gang by everyone involved in it. The minister has made a lot of commentary about needing to find headroom in the infrastructure budget, which is a fancy way of saying she plans to cut projects across our communities. Her claim is that projects cannot be funded in the current funding envelope. But I have to ask the minister: how does that apply to a program of works like the Princes Highway corridor program, which had a fixed amount of funding allocated to it? This was a billion-dollar bucket of funding by the previous federal government for road safety projects. There are three states that are involved, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, and the states and communities put forward their priority projects within the headroom of a billion dollars.

I would like to ask the minister in the consideration in detail: do you guarantee the funding of that program is actually safe. More particularly as a Victorian minister, will you guarantee the $300 million allocated to Victoria is safe from your razor-gang review? Does the minister acknowledge that delaying these road safety project is putting people's lives at risk? I have written to the minister on many occasions about specific road safety projects that were funded, where local priorities had been selected and that had the support of local communities and councils. They are now caught up in this review process. That means that nothing is happening to projects that local communities identified as major safety risks. These projects could have been funded by the headroom of the existing funding provided by the previous federal government. Does the minister acknowledge that delaying road safety project is actually putting lives at risk in a program like the Princes Highway corridor works?

I want to refer specifically to the minister's comments on ABC Radio in relation to the infrastructure review where she said:

… it's to look at every project that is not currently under construction, and that wasn't an election commitment in the last election campaign …

I ask the minister: given that Labor Party election commitments are excluded from the review, were all Labor's infrastructure election commitments subjected to business cases or any cost-benefit analysis in the lead-up to the election? I ask the minister also: if she's excluding Labor election commitments from her razor-gang review but refusing to quarantine vital road safety projects which had been allocated money from a fixed fund, does she understand there is no risk of blowing the budget in that fund if there is a fixed allocation within that headroom? Finally in relation to the review, at what stage is a project under construction? When the consultation, assessment and design work have been done, is it considered to be under construction, or will those projects be scrapped as well?

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