Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to challenge the statement by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Anthony Albanese, that he did not realise how many community groups were affected by his government’s decision to cut funding to the Regional Partnerships program. In his words, the community projects are ‘really good’. In fact, they are far better than ‘really good’. They have been and still are critical to grassroots delivery of genuine local and regional projects. Volunteers within community groups have spent many hours compiling funding submissions and designing projects to be eligible to meet the criteria, and their applications have gone through the rigorous process of evaluation and assessment by the relevant area consultative committee boards and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

On budget night the government announced that, unless duly signed contractual arrangements were in place, federal Labor would not fund any project submitted under the Regional Partnerships program. In fact, federal Labor intend to introduce their own Better Regions program, but that will not be delivering to communities until late 2009. Many of these projects are time critical.

Minister Albanese was tackled on Channel 7’s Sunrise program about one particular project in Bundaberg—a disabled children’s program—which was a victim of the funding cuts. He acknowledged that it was an outstanding project and said he had personally read the file and was going to look for alternative funding sources for it. So now we have the minister back-flipping on the government’s budget announcement and stating to David Koch on the Sunrise morning program on Wednesday, 20 May that some really good applications for community projects have been lodged and he would fast-track the examination of all applications. The minister should have examined all of the applications prior to making his decision to scrap the Regional Partnerships program.

Is the minister giving community organisations such as those in my electorate of Forrest hope that the government will do the right thing and make good on the funding approvals and that all projects will be examined—or was this just a throwaway answer to the media and there will be continued silence from now on? I do not want this to turn out to be false hope. If it is good enough for the minister to personally intervene in the Bundaberg disabled playground project, and to perhaps back down and fund the project, then it should be good enough for the minister to personally intervene in the five approved projects in my electorate, as well as the other 14 community project funding applications submitted in my electorate of Forrest up until November last year. They are outstanding community projects which have all attracted other funding partners, including state Labor, and all are worthy of matching federal funding. The Forrest electorate has been severely affected by the scrapping of the Regional Partnerships program by the Rudd Labor government, and all the funding submissions have gone through a rigorous process of evaluation. (Time expired)