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

It is there until 2012—you nong—and they are shutting routes today. I say to the Leader of the National Party that he has really lost the plot. They did nothing over 12 years to truly represent regional Australia. Now they are part of the problem—never part of the solution—as opposed to the new government, which has been moving very swiftly to put its programs in place.

I met with the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia and with Regional Development Australia just on Monday. We are rolling out our commitments, which we are fulfilling under the Better Regions program. We are concluding all of the arrangements for the Regional Partnerships program. We are delivering some $1.75 billion over five years to extend the Roads to Recovery program—an extra $250 million for local roads. We are contributing $26 billion over the next six years for road and rail projects—the biggest ever infrastructure program. We are establishing the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure program. But one thing that we will not do, and it is in accordance with the report done by the House of Representatives committee, is fund private, for-profit businesses for mates. That is what we will not do. The report clearly recommended that, but we have a minority report from the National Party on that committee stating that they—

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