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

You won't find much more hypocrisy in this place than when listening to the Nationals complaining about road funding. I say this in absolute honesty. We've just heard five minutes of whining and complaining about something that was actually done by them. In 2018, the then deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, the member for Riverina, had this specific plan laid out; as part of the National Road Safety Action Plan there was a commitment to lower speed limits. That comes on top of the fact that you would have thought a member from Victoria would have stood up during those nine years and complained about Victoria only getting seven per cent of the infrastructure spend nationally. But, no, there was absolute silence. It was okay to build a backlog of potholes and road repairs with no investment in Victoria because they were in government. Now, suddenly, it's: 'Oh, look at this. It's a big problem.'

You can't expect all this backlog to be fixed in five years. But what you can expect is a government to be out there working for rural and regional Australians, and that is why there are more Labor MPs in rural and regional seats than the National Party—because we got rid of those that sit around and do nothing. We got rid of those who just enjoy themselves here, creating havoc and delivering nothing. We saw more press releases on every single road project in Victoria than we did shovels or action. The number of times they went to an election promising to fund this and to fund that and to do all these things for rural and regional Australia—they didn't do a thing. The National Party is the absolute most disgraceful party you can think of for rural and regional Victoria.

When you look at every one of their seats, they have problems with education, with health and with jobs. The one consistency is re-voting in Nationals. That's why they are down to four per cent of the national vote—because they do not deliver. They're just a little tail on the back of the coalition dog, and all they do is wag and deliver nothing.

I look forward to the member for Riverina coming in and talking about how he looked at the Watson Street ramps as being so important in rural and regional Victoria. He promised it. He wanted to get behind it. But, of course, the knifings saw him removed for the member for New England—now the One Nation member for New England, I think. They saw that gone.

We saw him go to the election under the Urban Congestion Fund, the car park rorts fund, promising to build car parks in specific areas. A little known fact is that the three car parks they promised were already built. All they did was give money to Victoria to cover the work that was already done.

Then they promised to build new lanes on the Hume Freeway, and what did we get? We got a $50 million announcement with big fanfare. They even sent one of the National MPs down—that was the first time he'd been down to the Hume Freeway to see what was going on—promising $50 million for a new lane on the freeway. We know it was a zombie promise. If they think they can deliver 23 kilometres of dual road for $50 million, they have rocks in their heads. It wasn't going to happen, and they didn't deliver a single thing. They went to that election and the 2022 election lying to the people of McEwen, Nicholls and Indi about getting these things fix. They never delivered a thing.

What have we done? We have doubled the funding to Roads to Recovery. Since coming to government, Roads to Recovery has gone from $500 million to $1 billion this year. It's worth noting that, when we formed government in 2002, we learned that the coalition government, again through the sneakiness and the mischievous work of those opposite, had frozen maintenance to highways all the way back to 2013. That was the contribution the coalition government made towards essential maintenance on the highways that we all rely on. So what we've got is an absolute joke put up here by the member for Mallee about road funding and needing maintenance for potholes and all these other things. But, of course, the member didn't get up and say, 'Look, I was part of a government that froze that funding 10 years ago and caused backlogs for years and years.' It is a bit like the electricity bills. Those opposite complain about electricity bills but never once have you heard them get up and say, 'We are so sorry that we hid the price rises from the Australian public.' It is simply part of their DNA to be disrespectful to the Australian people by sneakily hiding price rises, because they did not want to go to an election and face the fact they had done nothing. This is an absolute failure of a government and that's why we're sitting where we are today. On every single measure on road funding, you can see our government has been delivering. We've delivered more roads, more road funding and more project results in three years than those opposite could muster up press releases in nine. It is an absolute joke, and, seriously, the member should apologise.

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