Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit I can't believe the member for Page had time to pitch that MPI, because of the amount of time that is being chewed up by the internal fighting between the Nationals and the Liberal Party. I'm sure it has taken up a huge amount of time. He has the absolute gall to accuse this government of abandoning regional Australia and hurting household budgets and businesses, when the Nationals spend more time talking to each other and the media than they do talking to people in their local communities. The last point that was just made by the member for Page, which was backed in by a bunch of people behind him, was so misleading. It's deliberately misleading the public on the issue of speed limits.

It was the previous coalition government that determined that priority action No. 1 was to review speed limits in rural and regional Australia. In fact, it was the former deputy prime minister, the member for Riverina, who made the commitment. It was priority action No. 1. The communique that was released following that has his name attached to it along with a bunch of Liberal and National state counterparts. I'm just going to table that. So, when the Nationals are out there on some folly about how reducing road speed limits has somehow got something to do with carbon emissions, please know that the Office of Road Safety is following through with a priority action plan that was devised under their former government. I know that might not seem important, but, to us, telling the truth in local communities is important.

The other truth that's incredibly important is that road funding has increased under this government. Not only has it increased for every local council across the country, but road blackspot funding has also increased. We have created the new Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program. Member for Page, you might be interested in this. It means an increase of $461 million across councils in New South Wales—over $1.2 billion in road funding to every single council—and that's not some beauty pageant grant contest. It's money that automatically goes to every single council; no colour coded spreadsheets needed. Every local council is getting more money for local roads than ever before, because we know how important it is to travel safely to your school, to your sporting events, to medical appointments, to work—

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