Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the opposition’s amendment to add the member for O’Connor to this committee. The government has chosen to make an additional nomination. That clearly alters the balance on the committee and it is therefore appropriate that the balance should be retained by having an additional opposition member on the committee. When the minister made his opening remarks on why this particular committee needed to be established and why it was necessary to add the member for New England, he made a number of criticisms of the previous Regional Partnerships program. He is going to have what will be about the 10th or 12th inquiry into this particular program. He is going to do it all again and again. However, that would all seem to be somewhat useless in view of the fact that, in the budget, the Labor Party abolished the scheme altogether. They abolished the program. So we are going to have an inquiry into a program that does not even exist.

One hundred and sixteen projects which had been through the full assessment process, examined by the department and recommended and announced by the government were axed in the budget. Amongst the projects that were axed was a grant of some $550,000 to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Dubbo. The flying doctor is celebrating its 80th anniversary today. This is a very important day for the Flying Doctor Service, a service that for such a long period of time has provided a mantle of safety to people who live outside the capital cities. We should all join in celebrating with the Flying Doctor Service the tremendous contribution that it has made to safety in regional Australia over a long period of time.

I know the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, who lives in Sydney, does not have much concern for the people who do not have a doctor on call whenever they need one, cannot go to a hospital and do not have a plethora of services available whenever their child might be sick. Although, since he lives in New South Wales, the services probably would not turn up for him anyhow. The reality is that people in country areas have depended upon the Flying Doctor Service for 80 years. Labor’s birthday gift to the Flying Doctor Service is to abolish a $550,000 grant to extend the flying doctor services at Dubbo. Those services were going to be funded under the Regional Partnerships program. Labor has axed that project.

Let me ask: who decided that a dead tree at Barcaldine is more important than expanding the services of the flying doctor at Dubbo? No-one. There was no proper departmental assessment. Labor just announced it during the election campaign. They are going to fund a memorial at Barcaldine in preference to the flying doctor at Dubbo. Who decided that a footpath to a dead tree in Barcaldine is more important than a childcare centre at Yarram? Labor have abolished the funding for the childcare centre at Yarram. Who decided that a car park near a Labor owned hotel in Barcaldine is more important to fund than a surf rescue boat at Bunbury?

And who decided that replacing the sprung dance floor at Albert Hall in Canberra is more important than building a mental health unit at Tamworth? Labor made those decisions, without any scrutiny, without any public inquiries, without any Audit Office examinations. They are funding the re-springing of a dance floor in Canberra rather than helping the Flying Doctor Service. That is Labor’s priority. If you are looking at how important the dance floor at the Albert Hall is, even the Vice-President of Friends of the Albert Hall, Dr Lenore Coltheart, said, ‘The Albert Hall still has the best dance floor in Canberra, but it’s not as well sprung as it once was.’ So having the Albert Hall dance floor as well sprung as it once was is more important than looking after the flying doctor and more important than the regional performance centre in Broken Hill. All of these projects, some of which had actually been supported by Labor branches, Labor members and Labor candidates at the last election, are to go.

We are going to fund a new streetscape at Ipswich, in a marginal electorate that the Labor Party was interested in winning. But why should we fund a streetscape for Ipswich? What is wrong with the towns in my electorate? You are not funding any of those, but you have chosen one in a marginal Labor electorate. Why have you targeted that? Why have you decided to spend so much money on the dead Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine? It is because this particular project happens to be in the marginal electorate of Flynn.

We have the hypocrisy of government members, time and time again, being critical of the Regional Partnerships program because, they said, there was more money spent in government electorates than non-government electorates. But what have they done? They have invented a scheme of their own which is not subject to any scrutiny and where there was no application process. Labor just announced it and all those projects are being funded in this week’s budget, where others are not. The ones that have been properly assessed, that have been examined by the area consultative committees and that have gone through a competitive process—all 116 of them—are getting nothing.

Instead, Labor are inventing slush funds for their own projects. And now they are going to expand this to an even grander scale, with $41 billion worth of slush funds created in this budget. The new Building Australia Fund has been allocated $20 billion for the next couple of years, but, ironically, nothing is going to be spent over the next few years. They are going to spend some time planning, and then after the planning they are going to have Infrastructure Australia decide which projects will be funded. Infrastructure Australia will no doubt be staffed well and truly by Labor Party mates. When are we going to get some announcements about how this money is going to be spent? Lo and behold, about six to nine months before the next election. So Labor has a $20 billion construction slush fund, run by Sussex Street, that is going to announce the projects that will be funded.

In the meantime, Australians are going to continue to die on roads that could be constructed now. They could be moving the bulldozers onto the F3 to Branxton Road in the Hunter Valley now. The member for Hunter, the Minister for Defence, was strongly supportive of this $870 million project before the election, but after the election he forgot all about it. ‘No, well, maybe we won’t do it after all.’ And what have the people of Newcastle got as a result of this budget? Not the $870 million that the coalition had committed to build this vital road link but $800,000 for another study of the road needs of the Hunter—$800,000! Do you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this will be the 28th study into the transport needs of the Hunter? What was wrong with the other 27, many of which had been done by the state Labor governments? But we have to have a 28th. We cannot get in there with a bulldozer and actually build something. We have to have another study.

Labor also objected to our proposals to build a $2 billion bypass around Goodna, in the areas around Brisbane. I see some Brisbane members present in the chamber. They objected to that and instead said they would widen the existing road, a project which is not recommended by anybody with any sound judgement. It will disrupt traffic for years and, once it is completed, it will have to be extended. But is there money in this budget to build the project that Labor said was so important that it had to be built immediately? No, there is not. How much would you expect in Labor’s first budget to build this $1 billion to $2 billion project—maybe $200 million or $300 million? What have they put up? A miserable $5 million for planning—nothing to actually do any building. That is the story across the line. If you look at the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government’s glossy brochures from this budget, you will see one or two actual construction projects, nearly all of which are underway, and then four or five commitments for planning—for design work.

Why aren’t we actually building roads? Many of them are ready to go. They have all been put on hold. Labor is putting them all in the cupboard until just before the election. Lo and behold, the government will say, ‘We have inflation under control, we have the budget balanced and so now we can go out and spend this money.’ Of course, most of the money was put there by Peter Costello and the previous government. What we have in this budget is Peter Costello’s surplus and Wayne Swan’s taxes. All this is going to go—the money that we have saved from a good economy over the years is now going to be saved up as a slush fund for the next election.

In addition, these things are not all they seem to be. We certainly need the member for O’Connor to be a part of this committee so that he can bring some rigor to these sorts of discussions and make sure that there is a fair and reasonable balance in the discussions that are going to be undertaken. I am sure that the member for O’Connor will be particularly interested in the Albert Hall dance floor. He will probably want to go and visit Barcaldine to have a look at this dead tree to see why it is important for there to be a memorial there, why there needs to be a footpath and why there needs to be a car park near the Globe Hotel, which happens to be owned by the president of the ALP branch in Barcaldine. I am sure the member for O’Connor would like to know what role the president of the ALP branch in Barcaldine played in deciding to put $2½ million into a car park right near his hotel—a hotel that he has owned and been wanting to sell for quite some time.

This is the kind of honesty that Labor is trying to tell us that they are going to bring to the Regional Partnerships program. I hope they have a nice time jigging around on the Albert Hall dance floor after their parties because this is being paid for by the people who are going to be denied a service from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Dubbo. It is going to be paid for by the people who will not have a rescue boat in Bunbury and the children who cannot go to a childcare centre at Yarram. Those are the sorts of projects Labor did not want to fund. Those are the sorts of projects they want to have an inquiry into. Yet, what is going to happen to the $174 million in this year’s budget to pay for Labor’s election frauds and bribes?

The sorts of projects that they have created never went through any scrutiny but are now going to be funded while 116 applicants went through the proper process and often got matching funding from state governments. Many of them got letters of support from members opposite, and many of them were supported by senators and Labor Party identities. Ask the Broken Hill unions what they think about the decision that has been made in relation to the important project at Broken Hill. Some of these projects had support from Labor identities. They are all being axed so that the member for Oxley can get something for Ipswich.

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