Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I ask the minister again about the underspend in the Sustainable Regions Program and the recent announcement made in relation to the Longreach airport upgrade. I understand the significance of this capital works program. Can the minister tell me when the government made it a condition of their grant that the Queensland government also had to chip in? Was that made clear to the proponents of this scheme when they put their expressions of interest in as far back as a year and a half ago? Why is this new conditionality now before us? Isn’t this just another means by which the government can promise to upgrade the airport only to dud them when a condition that was never part of the deal is used as the excuse to not deliver on the money?

I have talked about all the underspends. The reason we are getting underspends is that the government is not going through due process. It is making announcements on the run, it is making them in marginal seats to try and prop up their electoral interests and it is building in safeguards to avoid having to deliver down the track. That is the Longreach airport. I am pleased that the Minister for Defence is in the chamber. As a former president of the AMA he might be interested in this, because it is another horrendous underspend in what is otherwise a worthy cause, and that is the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund to help get doctors into remote and regional areas—a fund announced in 2004 and for which $15 million was committed. But here we are, three years later, and only $2 million has been spent. Why is it that the government has failed regional Australia so hopelessly in terms of delivering on this program? Has that money been rolled over? Is it still available for useful capital works?

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