Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. What are the Albanese Labor government's plans to support our regions and how do they differ from what we inherited from the former government?

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

I'm delighted to answer that question from the member for Paterson, a fantastic regional member. We on this side of the House are deeply committed to the economic productivity of our regions. Of course, in the lead-up to the election we announced a range of policies across government that we will be investing in in our regions. In my own portfolio there is $200 million for the Kennedy Highway; funding for the Tanami, Stuart and Augusta highways; $80 million for roadside facilities to support interstate truck drivers; $200 million for the Bruce Highway between Rockhampton and Gladstone; the Nowra bypass; Shoalhaven roads; a new university campus in Cairns; a hangar so that the Royal Flying Doctor Service can respond across all of Northern Tasmania; funding for stage 2 of the Gippsland Logistics Precinct; the Muswellbrook civic precinct upgrade; and the Mackay Electric Vehicle and Energy Training Centre. More broadly across government, Minister Bowen has the Powering the Regions Fund to help our regional economies and our regional industries actually take up the opportunities of renewable energy. We have the Minister for Housing with the Regional First Home Buyer Support Scheme to invest in helping young Australians in our regions get their first home.

Our Central Australia plan is investing in roads, digital connectivity, the environment, cultural heritage, skills training, health and crime prevention in the very heart of our nation. There is a $250 million top-up to the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program specifically for regional and rural roads, which complements our ongoing commitments for programs like Roads to Recovery, the Bridges Renewal Program and the Black Spot Program. This stands in stark contrast to what the people opposite did when they were in government. They took a very different approach.

From reports today we see the incredible lack of transparency and the pork-barrelling that actually happened out of the Community Development Grants. We saw that one project is a $25 million grant to a company that's 70 per cent owned in the Cayman Islands.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Barker will cease interjecting and keep reading his material.

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

We've been left to clean up this absolute mess of pork-barrelling. We've seen nine projects that date back to 2016, six projects where there's no proponent and over $18 million of projects where there is no actual location for a project. The member for New England, the previous minister, wrote to the Treasurer about two projects that he awarded to himself, of which there is no actual record of any decision being made. This is the mess that you've left for us.

I am very proud of our record in regional Australia on this. We are investing in the regions. We'll continue to do so, instead of the pork-barrelling that was actually categorised by the last government. We're going to clean up this mess.