Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. How will the government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan improve road safety and stimulate local economies?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hasluck for her question and her ongoing interest in transport and infrastructure development, including in her electorate. The package that is before the House today provides an additional $90 million for the Black Spot Program. The Black Spot Program improves safety right around the nation. For every dollar spent, there is a far greater saving due to the fall in health costs from accident reduction and in terms of efficiencies on our roads. This will fund an additional 350 projects. It brings spending on black spots to over $250 million over the next two years, more than double what the former government was planning to spend over the same period.

We are also providing an additional $150 million for repairing and maintaining regional roads. In order to do all this, of course, we need to get the package that is before the House passed. You would expect the National Party to at least be supporting regional road projects. If nothing else, you would expect them to be supporting that. But the Leader of the National Party, the shadow minister for transport, has already made his contribution to this debate and he has dismissed the $150 million. Indeed he has called it ‘a paltry effort’. He has said:

You could spend all of that on one road in my electorate and you still would not have caught up on the maintenance backlog just for that road.

Who was the minister who presided over the maintenance backlog? Who was the minister for transport in the former government? He and his Nationals colleagues presided over massive cuts in road funding, including a cut of 35 per cent. In 2005-06 it was $4.3 billion, down to $2.8 billion in 2006-07—a cut of 35 per cent in road funding. So out of touch are they with people who used to be a part of the constituency that they engaged in. This is what people in the sector have had to say about the package put forward under the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. Wendy Machin, President of the NRMA, said yesterday:

The NRMA warmly welcomes this additional funding, particularly the fact that a substantial proportion of the money will be immediately available to be spent this financial year.

Trevor Martyn, of the Australian Trucking Association, said:

We are very pleased the Government has looked beyond tomorrow’s headlines and is putting money into fixing the roads and making them safer.

Every road user will benefit from the Government’s plan.

The fact is that the opposition are just so out of touch. It is all about them; it is all about the politics. The Leader of the Opposition is more concerned about protecting his own position as Leader of the Opposition than he is about defending the interests of the nation. The default position, because his party room is just so divided, is to come in here and simply say, ‘We will oppose the whole package.’ They stand condemned, they stand isolated from their own base, they stand isolated from their own communities, and over coming days, weeks and months there will be a real political price to pay for the political opportunism of the Leader of the Opposition.