Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Coonawarra Gold was a grape seed oil company in South Australia. On 20 June 2005 the former government approved $433,000 of taxpayers’ funds for this company. It was to put odour control filters into the company—a worthy objective to assist with the odour that would otherwise go out to the local community. As part of my duties as a diligent regional development minister I visited Coonawarra in January this year and I looked for the Coonawarra Gold factory. I could not find it anywhere.

I began to think that the only odour that was around was the stench from the Regional Partnerships program. Indeed, that was the only odour that was around because it turns out that the company went bust on 11 November 2005. But just one month earlier, they got $433,000 of taxpayers’ funds even though they were going bust. You might think that perhaps the National-Liberal Party did not know about this company going bust—you cannot expect them to know every company that exists in their electorate. But the general manager of Coonawarra Gold was Mr Pat Trainor—he is known to those opposite. He was the Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Florey in the state election that was held at that very time. That is the stench that comes out of this program.

The opposition are not interested in producing results for regional Australia; they are interested in producing votes in regional Australia. But this is not the only cruel hoax being played on regional Australia because, on the one hand, you have taxpayers’ funds going to organisations that do not exist but, on the other hand, you have pledges of taxpayers’ money that are never realised. For example, $1 million was approved way back in January 2004 for a program and, four years later, there was no contract, not a single dollar. I have yet another example: the Dalby Wambo Event Centre in the electorate of Maranoa put in an application in May 2005, three years ago, for $2 million. It was approved in March 2006 but there was no contract and no money—just a cruel hoax.

Regional Partnerships was a program designed by the National Party to secure votes so that they could run around prior to election campaigns and say, ‘Everything is fine; the cheque’s in the mail.’ But it did not actually get delivered. They do deliver money where nothing exists, but they do not deliver on their commitments. The same opposition today cannot be believed when you hear the comments of the shadow Treasurer and compare them to how they acted in government with their wasteful expenditure and their wasteful pork-barrelling.

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