Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all remember the Prime Minister saying repeatedly that the vaccine rollout was not a race and that we didn't have to hurry. And we all know where that has got us, with my own home state of Victoria going into a snap lockdown again today. The Prime Minister was probably the only person in the entire country who did not see the urgency of rolling out the vaccine program and taking us away from COVID lockdowns. In isolation, the government's lax approach to the vaccine would be remarkable, but, in comparison to their energetic rorting of taxpayer funds, it is truly incredible.

The government may not think vaccination is a race, but they've certainly raced to pork-barrel funds into our marginal seats. We're at the back of the pack for vaccines, but the Morrison government is at the head of the field when it comes to rorts: airport rorts, sports rorts, car park rorts, Building Better Regions rorts and Safer Communities rorts. There are so many rorts that it's becoming impossible to keep up with them all. Today I want to focus particularly on two of them: airport rorts and car park rorts. Both of these scandals have achieved new attention this week, and, the more we learn the more questions there are.

First, on airport rorts: I'm sure we all remember the purchase of the Leppington Triangle. Just to recap, the Morrison government paid $30 million for a piece of land valued at $3 million. The price paid per hectare by the Morrison government was 22 times higher than the price paid by the New South Wales government for its portion of the Leppington Triangle. The then Deputy Prime Minister described it as a bargain, and the Prime Minister and minister for urban infrastructure brushed it off with a 'nothing to see here'. This week, finally, we saw the ministerial briefs that led to the purchase. How did the minister describe the purchase? He said: 'It seems perfectly sensible to me.'

Reading the brief, it is no wonder the Morrison government waited 10 months to release it. Addressed to the returned minister for urban infrastructure and implicating the returned Deputy Prime Minister, the brief describes the Leppington Triangle as being 'a small parcel of land', but then describes the purchase price of $30 million as 'reasonable, albeit reflecting the recent sharp increase in property prices in the area'. Without any further explanation, the brief claims that 'a small window of opportunity for the purchase exists' due to the 'mutual goodwill' that existed between the landholders and the Commonwealth. Given that the landholders received $27 million more than the property was worth and were then able to lease the property back from the Commonwealth on favourable terms, including having an underpass built under a road at the cost of $10 million so they could get access, it's not hard to guess where this goodwill came from. Hinting at the resulting scandal and attempted cover-up, the briefing notes the potential public interest in the purchase and offers the minister talking points with which to explain the high price. The brief even outlines the close relationships between the government and the landholders.

It's extraordinary that any minister could read this brief and conclude, 'Seems perfectly sensible to me.' It's even more extraordinary that both ministers who received this brief have since returned to the same portfolios. At best, these two ministers are incompetent. The Prime Minister and his ministers need to explain why their own officials chose to appropriate $32 million for this and other transactions even before negotiations with landholders were held and ahead of a deadline deliberately designed to beat New South Wales rezoning the land to agricultural land.

Now we have carpark rorts. This is a scandal that's got everything—it's got rampant under-delivery, it's got 20 marginal seats targeted, it's got spreadsheets being passed between the Prime Minister's office and Minister Tudge. It's $660 million with 87 per cent going to Liberal held or targeted seats. We saw the Prime Minister's ridiculous press conference this afternoon, where he said: 'I've got nothing to do with this. The minister had authority. It was all the minister'—when he personally signed off on the letter approving the funding on the day the government went into caretaker mode. And there are numerous email exchanges between his office and his staff and the minister's office in selecting what projects were to be funded. The Prime Minister is claiming nothing to see here? Give me a break! This is the fund that everybody wants to rort but nobody actually now wants to own up to making the decisions on. The Prime Minister is up to his neck in this, and he needs to own up to it and tell the Australian people why he did it.