Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The one consistency we have with the National Party is that they're blowhards in opposition. They're all bluster, bluff and carry-on about standing up for the regions. But when it comes to government, what did they do? Nothing—absolutely nothing! They had dodgy spreadsheets that were colour coded and took money out of regional areas all the time for themselves.

I'll mention the four words—and I want to get onto this, because this is a ripper—let's look at coal, iron ore and gas, three things where the National Party have screwed farmers over. They don't care what happens on the land; they only care about what's underneath it. The days of the National Party representing farmers are now gone. All they are doing is representing mining interests. They don't care about farmers. We hear them talking about roads and all this sort of stuff, but it's all bluff and blunder. I think the member for Riverina is a good bloke, but standing up to defend the member for Kooyong as your regional Treasurer was as bad as talking about former member for North Sydney Joe Hockey as your Treasurer! But we know you backed him, because you built a pool in North Sydney. That was one of the things you wanted to do.

Let's have a talk about what happened in the nine years of neglect under that lot opposite. Victoria got dropped to seven per cent of infrastructure spend. You'd think those Victorian MPs in the National Party would be standing up, but they didn't. They went out and backed that continuation. They made empty promises day after day. Let's talk about opening things that you never did. The member for Riverina would remember the day that his replacement—the bad one, the member for New England—came down and dug the hole for the quarantine centre, something that we funded. I'll tell you how petty the National Party are: they wouldn't let us get in the photo. They wouldn't let us get involved. We funded it and put it there, but they wouldn't let us. Just like the Wallan superclinic. We funded it, but due to the pettiness of the now Deputy Leader of the Opposition they wouldn't do an official opening, because it was a Labor project and that would have screwed up their story about Labor not building superclinics. They are an absolute farce when it comes to integrity.

When we're talking about roads, we hear, 'The farmers bring the food in.' They can't get to the Melbourne markets, because of the Hume Highway being such a mess. What happened? In two elections they were promising $50 million for the Hume Highway. It was a zombie project, which we know they had lots of. They hadn't consulted with anyone, they hadn't spoken to funding partners or anything. What did they do? Here's a letter from the now disgraced Alan Tudge, their mate, the car park rort scheme man. They took the money out of the Hume Highway upgrade. They went to two elections promising it and then ripped off regional Victorians for $50 million. They don't stand up and talk about these things, because they know we're right. There's a big reason that we look at things like the Macedon Ranges Health centre. That was another one we built, but, of course, what happened? The now Deputy Leader of the Opposition went out and opened it but never mentioned that it was funded and built under a Labor government. You know what? They're all good on announcements. Everything they do is all fluff and bubble, but there is no substance. The only thing they had substance in was the rort scheme under the previous government.

We talk about telecommunications, which is an absolute ripper, with $51 billion spent on a $25 billion program. They took the black-spot funding out of regional areas to go and pork barrel their seats. That's exactly what happened. Areas that were prone to bushfire, major roads and rural areas lost funding so that they could prop up seats for themselves, like that of the member for New England to keep him happy. They took it away from Victorians. No Victorian National MP has ever stood up for Victoria. They're happy to stand on them when they're in government, but they won't stand up for them. Never once will you hear them come out and say, 'We did the wrong thing.' In round 4 of the Mobile Black Spot Program, every single one of the projects promised and ready to be delivered was taken away because they wanted to fund their election commitments. Then they had the hide to talk about us. At least we're funding programs in regional areas, plus we're funding our election commitments. Not like those opposite. They invested in copper and put regional Victorians behind.

Regional Australians have done nothing but suffer when the National Party are in government. They like to talk about what they do, but, if you have a look at all the health indexes and education indexes, every single one of them has never improved, because the Nats are all talk and no action.

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