Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The electorate that I represent, the seat of Lalor, seems to be at the epicentre of any decision those opposite make. All too often the actions taken in Canberra by this government are detrimental to the residents who live in the electorate of Lalor. When it was the GP tax, we were in the top 10 of bulk-billing electorates that would have been hurt. When the Liberals announced their attempted income tax hike—remember the increase to the Medicare levy?—we were in the top 10 of those who would be most affected. When the government announced tax cuts that favoured people in higher income brackets, we were of course in the bottom 10 of electorates that would benefit from that change. It is clear that the electorate of Lalor is low on the Liberals' priority list, and we've seen that most grievously in their questionable allocation of grants, most infamously the sports rorts grants—the Prime Minister's fund, administered by Senator McKenzie, where we saw an uneven and unfair allocation of grants to marginal seats and safe Liberal and National seats across the country.

The population of the city I call home and represent has grown extraordinarily, by 42 per cent between 2013 and 2019. We are now a city of over 275,000 people in Melbourne's outer west. In that time, cricket has grown by 137 per cent in participation rates; soccer has grown by 124 per cent; netball, my love and passion, by 69 per cent; while basketball grew by a whopping 356 per cent. You think these impressive numbers would mean something to a program that claims to be, and I quote:

Supporting small to medium scale projects … to improve local community sport infrastructure which will support greater community participation in sport and physical activity and/or offer safer and more inclusive community sporting hubs.

Wouldn't you have thought that the seat of Lalor would've been a high priority? But guess how much the sporting clubs in Lalor got? Zero. In those same years, women's football—footy, of course, being Australian Rules for my friends north of the Barassi Line—has grown by a whopping 600 per cent. In those same years, there was a massive growth in women's sporting teams and women's participation. But how many clubs or grounds got funding from the Prime Minister's grants to build female changerooms? Zero—zero for the electorate of Lalor.

But it's not just in the scandal-plagued sports rorts that Lalor has missed out; it's across the board, with all this government's decisions. Our local council told me about their experience with congestion funds—that buzz word which I'm sure tested well in the marketing groups but doesn't actually deliver much. The local council were contacted by the minister, spruiking this fund, but, when they sought clarification on the grants, they were knocked back and told it's not up to them. Seriously? They wrote to the council announcing funding and then the minister told them not to bother because it was out of his hands. But the hollow man-esque scenario of writing to council to grandstand when they knew nothing was available isn't the worst of it. How can the government wipe their hands of our city—25 kilometres from the CBD of Melbourne; home to the most Victorians who spend more than two hours a day commuting to and from work? How can it be ignored?

Clearly, the congestion our community faces needs to be addressed. The state government are doing great things to reduce this congestion. They are removing three level crossings in the city and offering more transport options. But, while the state government gives and gives, the federal Liberals have forgotten about Melbourne's west and Wyndham. The Prime Minister is happy to stand with maps of the Monash or the Eastern, but his knowledge of the West Gate is how to get to Geelong. Despite all the stats and the common sense about building congestion-busting infrastructure—and the marketing screams while donning a shiny new hard hat—in the eyes of our marketing PM, Lalor was not worthy. What did we get from this government in congestion funds? Zero. In fact, in Victoria, coalition seats and some marginal seats received 89 per cent of the $1.26 billion allocated across Victoria, leaving 11 per cent for the rest of us—and, again, nothing for Lalor; absolutely zero.

I have been on my feet in this chamber so many times talking about parking at train stations and about Labor's commitment at the last election to build the Wyndham west link, which would create two bridges on the edge of our city to move us in and out, to connect the two sides across the river, but the government claims that we didn't ask. In fact, we did. Labor proposed infrastructure projects at the last election and even our previous mayors have written to the minister about the infrastructure we need. We did ask, but those opposite chose to give us nothing. They just don't care about our community's needs.

The long list of rorts has grown in recent weeks, with the New Daily's shocking revelations of the rorts in the community development grants. It gets better and better! The CDG program is 11 times the size of the sports rorts and the pork-barrelling more blatant: 75 per cent of the funding went to Liberal seats; $10 million has been spent in Liberal seats and just over $4 million in Labor seats; and, of the 27 electorates that missed out on funding altogether, 22 were Labor seats—and it will be no surprise to anyone listening that Lalor was one of those seats. It is clear by the actions they take and the decisions they make that the Liberals don't care about Lalor. They have never made one election commitment to our community since I have been in this place. They treat the entire spectrum of government grants with contempt and don't deliver to the areas in need.

The disdain has been exposed again by the JobKeeper program and the Prime Minister's snapback deadline that he refuses to move away from. The postcodes of 3029 and 3030 encompass almost every residential suburb. They also have the highest number of JobKeeper applications of any postcode in Victoria, behind the Melbourne CBD. While there are holes in the JobKeeper payments, it's clear our local businesses are reliant on these payments. I fear that, if the JobKeeper ends, with the PM's snapback deadline, our Centrelink lines will grow and our local businesses will close.

As of last week, the list of people warning against the cutting of JobKeeper payments were the OECD, the Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Australian Institute of Company Directors and many private forecasters. If JobKeeper ends in September, it will be devastating to our local economy. So I stand here and I say: Prime Minister, there's a place just between the leafy east and the towns beyond Greater Geelong; it's called Melbourne's west. It's time to find us, it's time to fund us, and it's time to give Melbourne's west and Lalor a fair go.