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

Can I state to the honourable member opposite that if you are going to start off a contribution in this chamber by talking about the processes here and saying that this should be a process whereby questions are asked and then answered succinctly and that people should have more time to do that, then maybe starting off with a five-minute speech was not the best way to get credibility on that. I make that obvious point.

The fact is that the opposition have had opportunities to ask these questions in parliament but have chosen not to. There were a range of questions asked by the honourable member opposite, including purported quotes, but he did not say where those quotes were sourced from. That suggests to me that they were not really quotes. What I have said clearly is that the Rudd government’s approach to transport issues will include a comprehensive attitude towards regional Australia. It is one that recognises that transport issues do not stop when you get to the outskirts of cities. This has been a problem that has been identified with AusLink in the way that it has worked. Businesses, particularly those engaged in our ports, have identified to me that the problem is with the failure of that last five to 10 kilometres of getting freight to port.

The government has a comprehensive strategy to deal with roads. I find it remarkable that the member for Wide Bay, who was the previous minister for transport, has identified a road in his electorate as the worst in Australia, even though he was responsible for transport funding for 12 years of the previous government. There have been exclusively National Party ministers for transport from 1996 until 2007 and yet, six months into the new government, they come into this chamber and they say: ‘I have the worst road in Australia in my electorate. Why haven’t you fixed it?’ That is what they say to the new minister. It is absolutely extraordinary.

I will say this about our promises: our election commitments across the board will be honoured. What is more, they add up. We do not have a situation like that of the coalition. On 20 February the member opposite, the member for Wide Bay, put out a release saying:

... the coalition committed to spending $3 billion more money than Labor.

Three weeks later, on 11 March, he said in parliament that the coalition had put ‘$3 billion to $5 billion towards our commitments for roads’. On 17 March he said that the coalition had promised $22.3 billion ahead of the election, but the next day he put out a press release saying that they had committed to spending $31 billion before 2013. So is it $31 billion or is it $22 billion? The fact is that their commitments could not be believed because they simply did not add up, whereas on this side of the chamber we actually believe in honouring our commitments. We did that through the budget process.

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