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

What an extraordinary performance! The Nationals have an absolute hide talking about process and accountability. This is the same opposition whose Regional Partnerships program was criticised by the National Audit Office in a three-volume, 1,200-page report. This is what it said:

… the manner in which the program had been administered … had fallen short of an acceptable standard of public administration …

We have seen demonstration enough here in this chamber today of what the National Party is about. The shadow minister opposite, the leader of the National Party, sought towards the end of his speech to speak about funding for a Fraser Island centre. He said it was promised in election after election after election by the National Party and the coalition. But it was never funded, even though it was an election promise made by them. They promised it in three elections. We never promised it, but once we win government we are still supposed to fulfil a promise that they did not deliver after three elections. Absolutely extraordinary.

The shadow minister went on to agree that the Better Regions commitments were good commitments. That is what he said—that Labor’s election commitments were good commitments. He then went on to say, correctly, that there will be a process. He said that himself. We on this side of the House have absol-utely no problem with the fact that we made promises before the election that we regard not as core and non-core but rather as commitments. That having been said, we do not write blank cheques. We want to make sure that there is proper financial scrutiny. We are not going to fund cheese factories that have closed down. We are not going to fund railways that have burnt down. We are not going to fund ethanol plants that do not exist. That is why we are putting in place proper processes.

In a 51-minute spending spree before the 2004 election caretaker period, former parliamentary secretary De-Anne Kelly approved 16 regional projects worth $3.3 million. That was criticised, but the Audit Office report did not stop them. In one week leading up to the 2007 caretaker period, 32 projects were approved, 28 in coalition electorates. They gave $48 million in grants to private companies. And yet we have the extraordinary situation where those opposite have the hide to talk about process. On top of the rail line that burnt down, the cheese factory that closed down and the ethanol plant that does not exist, there is the grape seed oil factory that went bust at Coonawarra and the pet food factory—appropriately named Tailwaggers—that never opened, in the electorate of former National Party leader John Anderson.

In recent times, they have also said that this is all about funding for regional communities. This is what the leader of the National Party said on radio when he was talking to people in Broken Hill: ‘This program was specifically designed to provide things in small communities, where there are limited finance-raising capabilities, which otherwise could not be afforded. The big cities have got the resources that can often provide, on a commercial basis, projects which are simply unviable in regional areas.’

He said that, but what did he do when he was the minister? The previous government provided $43 million to capital cities under Regional Partnerships. Grants went to that great icon of regional Australia Bondi Beach—$1.5 billion to the North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club and $422,500 to the Marine Discovery Centre at Bondi Beach—as part of the 2004 election campaign commitments. $907,000 went to the electorate of Wentworth under the Regional Assistance Program, the forerunner to Regional Partnerships; $2 million went to Campbell Parade, Bondi, under the AusLink Strategic Regional Program. It is absolutely extraordinary.

The response of the leader of the Nationals to this, on 14 May on ABC radio in Broken Hill, was, ‘I do not think there are any examples of each being rorted.’ That is an unbelievable position. The Audit Office had a very different view. It found that a ‘feature of the program’s administration was the frequency with which practices departed from the published program guidelines and documented internal procedures’. The member for New England called these Clayton’s guidelines—the guidelines you have when you don’t have any guidelines—and he was correct. The definition of what was regional was based not on where the project was located but rather the margin of the electorate. That was the way they dealt with it. I raised today in parliament the mess about the Bundaberg turtle interpretive centre—treating taxpayers funds like a magic pudding. I note that there was no personal explanation from the member for Hinkler or from anyone else in this chamber about that.

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