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

I am very pleased to contribute to this debate on the MPI. It is quite extraordinary how weak the Leader of the National Party was—or is it the Liberal-National Party? They are not quite sure what political party they belong to, so it is not surprising that they do not know where they are going. It is clear that following last year’s election I inherited a portfolio which for 12 long years had been overseen by a string of National Party ministers who were consistent in some things. They were consistent in their inaction, in their drift, in their nepotism and in the corrupt way they handled the Regional Partnerships program. They were consistent in that all of them failed to have any policy of reform and failed to deliver for regional Australia. The National Party ministers viewed regional programs as nothing more than barrels of pork for doling out to mates and business associates. That was the way that they saw regional administration.

I have informed the House before about what went on under this program. We know about the ethanol plant at Gunnedah that was never built. There was $1.1 million of taxpayers’ money funded for that project. The proponent of that project said in a Sunday newspaper many months ago that they would pay the money back to the Australian taxpayers. I took up that offer and wrote to the proponent. The department took action on this issue, but there was no response. The money has not been returned.

Then there was the Indigo Cheese Factory in the electorate of Indi, which got $22,000 of taxpayers’ money three months after it closed its doors. Then there was approval for a toilet in Lock—$60,000. There are 290 residents in the town of Lock, so there was $206 for every man, woman and child in that town. That was approved by the former government. Minister De-Anne Kelly, the former member for Dawson, approved 16 projects, worth $3 million, in just 51 minutes prior to an election being called. Their definition of ‘regional Australia’ was very broad. Funding was given under their regional roads program to Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach, which is in the electorate of Wentworth. That was under their ‘regional’ program.

They had the Sustainable Regions Program that plucked out marginal seats and said that they were special and deserved funding. We know that the electorate of Macarthur was plucked out. Not Wollongong, not Goulburn, not Campbelltown and not Liverpool but Macarthur was plucked out as a sustainable region. When they defined the North Coast sustainable region, it began at the electorate of Lyne, which was then held by the Leader of the National Party—it now has better quality representation with the new member for Lyne—and went up the coast and around the electorate of Richmond. Why did it go around the electorate of Richmond? Because they voted Labor. Therefore, the good electorate of Richmond were not regarded as being part of a regional community. They also had the Darling Matilda Way sustainable region that excluded the electorate of Kennedy. It just stopped at the border of that electorate. That program is quite extraordinary.

In the past couple of weeks there has been another clanger in Sustainable Regions that I have not yet had the opportunity to inform the House of. I am very pleased to have been given this opportunity. Barlil Organic Poultry Pty Ltd is a company that has recently had substantial difficulties. It is in Cherbourg in the electorate of Wide Bay, which is held by the Leader of the National Party. On 5 July 2005 this private company got Sustainable Regions funding of almost half a million dollars—$495,000. The now Leader of the National Party became the Minister for Transport and Regional Services the very next day. Notice the timing there? You get your grants out to particular seats and then you become the minister the next day so the previous minister made that decision.

Indeed, the member for Wide Bay opened the project and wrote about it in his newsletter on his achievements between 2004 and 2007 to his electorate. It was a 37-page achievements document—37 pages paid for by the Australian taxpayer. In it he said that the Wide Bay Burnett Sustainable Regions program:

… will leave a legacy of significant projects which will continue to have a positive impact in the region for years to come.

That is what he said about this project—funding a private company. It has now gone bust. It owes a million dollars to creditors, many of them local businesses. Dozens of staff have not been paid their superannuation entitlements. We have half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money down the drain. We have a worker there quoted as saying on Channel 7 news—about the program they regard as top-notch:

I did not want anything to do with it. The bacteria spores were starting to grow on the chickens and they were still quite willing to use them for human consumption.

They are not talking about the bacteria growing on the carcass of the National Party. They are talking about a program in which chicken that was going green was being processed and sent out for sale, so Woolworths cancelled the contract. But what did the leader of the National Party say not beforehand but after this event? On Channel 7 news, in response to this collapse, he said, ‘It showed a lot of promise.’ That was their response, but because of the way the program is structured we are unable to get any of our money back. When I say ‘our’, I am talking about the taxpayers of Australia who have funded this largesse from the National Party opposite.

The fact is that we had the Leader of the National Party stand up here and complain about a number of issues that have occurred. One of the issues that he raised, which is a very serious issue, is Rex Airlines closing their regional routes. That is a serious issue. What did the Leader of the National Party do? I tell you what. Do you know which airline had the highest profit ratio in Australia last year? Was it Qantas? No. Was it Virgin? No. It was Rex. The Rex airline had a 14 per cent profit. I met with the CEO in Singapore two weeks ago. He did not raise the closure of any of these routes, and I say that, if the Leader of the National Party was fair dinkum about representing regional Australia, he should join me in condemning the actions of Rex in closing these routes. It is a betrayal. The fact is that the subsidy that was there, which was introduced in 2001 in the wake of the Ansett collapse as a temporary subsidy, is being withdrawn in 2012. Yet they are shutting the routes now, and the Leader of the National Party wants to score a political point rather than represent the people of regional New South Wales and join me in calling for Rex to reconsider its decision which people in regional Australia will quite rightly be angered about.

The people of Rex have good connections to the National Party. Let me tell you that the Leader of the National Party can pick up the phone and make a difference, and I call upon him to join with me in doing so. What is the contrast?

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