House debates
Thursday, 12 February 2026
Questions without Notice
Cost of Living
3:18 pm
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source
The member also refers to waste. I hope that, if she does know Kate, she tells Kate about the $31 billion in cost blowouts associated with Inland Rail and the $29 billion in cost blowouts for the NBN. At least something was being created there, but we actually paid the French $4 billion to cancel—to not build the submarines. We paid $1.8 billion out to victims of robodebt. We paid $444 million to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation without a tender process or even consultation with the foundation itself. We spent $660 million on commuter carparks, including where there was no railway station.
There was $423 million on an offshore processing contract awarded to a firm registered to a shack on Kangaroo Island. Now, I'm very affectionate about Kangaroo Island these days—but $423 million for a shack registered to a company there? There was $100 million on sports rorts funding based on the colour coded spreadsheet; $70 million on a COVIDSafe app that found only two unique positive COVID cases; $30 million for the Western Sydney airport land—remember that, 10 times its value?—and, of course, during COVID, the $20 billion of JobKeeper paid to companies who were increasing their profits, not having it decreased.
When we talk about waste, the Liberal Party are the experts.
URL: https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2026-02-12.101.4
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URL: https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2026-02-12.101.4
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