Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago I received a phone call from the infrastructure minister, Minister King. She asked me if I would take a position on a committee that she's setting up to look at applications that come through for the Growing Regions Program that she set up. It'll be a bipartisan committee, with government members, members of the Liberal Party, me and crossbenchers. I said, yes, I would do that. She wants to try a new way of assessing regional programs. I would be prepared to do my bit. Anyone that knows me in the time that I've been here knows that I always try to work in a collaborative way. I'm on the record as saying that sometimes in this place you have leverage, but most of the time you're relying on goodwill. So I was quite prepared to go along with her suggestion of this bipartisan committee.

So you can imagine my surprise last night during Senate estimates when members of Minister King's office were feeding information to Senator White to build a case to accuse me of trespassing in my own electorate. There were blown-up photographs of me and Senator McKenzie, who is the shadow minister for infrastructure, inspecting the Inland Rail. Senator White took great joy in trying to explain that somehow we were breaking the law and we were putting ourselves and others in danger because she had photographic evidence of us standing next to the Inland Rail. Apart from anything else, with line of sight two kilometres either way, we probably would have had time to not get run over by a train, should one have come through. But we were actually standing on a level crossing—perfectly legal.

I was horrified to think that a minister with a portfolio that's undertaking a review of all regional programs at the moment, a minister who is in charge of the largest and the most beneficial infrastructure project that this country has seen in the last hundred years, has the energy to try and somehow get me into trouble for trespassing too close to a railway line in my own electorate. I will continue on and be part of this committee process to assess the applications under the Growing Regions Program, but if the minister could focus on the job she has—a regional MP who is the minister for infrastructure, which to me is the most important portfolio in the cabinet because regional electorates rely on infrastructure. We rely on that to connect us to cities. Local councils rely on decisions the infrastructure minister makes about funding priorities for community infrastructure like roads. So the resources of a minister's office being placed in something as trivial as this, I've got to say, was a bit humorous. John Cleese would not have looked out of place in Senate estimates last night. It was the most Monty Pythonesque stunt that actually backfired. I'm sure Senator White was somewhat miffed when she found out that she was actually the patsy that was put out there with false information to try and discredit a couple of members of parliament doing their job and what was expected of them. Hopefully we can move on from here.