Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As they arrive in this world as an Australian citizen, stamped on their birth certificate will be: ‘I owe the federal government $9,000.’ That is the inheritance they will get from Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. They will ultimately have to pay off that debt, as will every other man, woman and child. They will have to pay off this massive debt that has been built up in 18 short months—and, as we read the budget papers, we find there is more to come.

The Labor Party loves those emotive words—it is all about the spin and the television image at night. We have heard about the education revolution. They love to make these grand announcements that require no follow-through. Before the last election, under their education revolution, they proposed a computer for every school student. That was the commitment from the Prime Minister—out there with a computer in hand, with a little backdrop, all stage-managed. What has happened? Now it is a computer for every second student. And who is going to have to pick up the maintenance and the ongoing costs? The schools themselves. So much for the education revolution—say something before the election and then wind it back after the election.

Labor do not really have to worry about following through with the apparent new language of their fandangled new nation-building program. The Liberal and National coalition government already had laid out the framework through AusLink for the future of road and rail and port access and infrastructure in Australia. It was the Liberal-National coalition that established AusLink in 2005. It was Australia’s first national transport framework to provide long-term planning and funding. AusLink I ran from 2004-05 through to 2008-09. AusLink II was scheduled to begin in the forthcoming financial year, from 2009 through until 2014. Under AusLink we spent more on infrastructure than any other federal government since Federation. They are the facts. That is on the record. Under AusLink some $15 billion was allocated over a five-year period. After we had done the hard work, the hard yards of paying off that $96 billion of Labor debt, we put the budget in surplus and we were then able to put more money into infrastructure across Australia without incurring more debt for future generations. AusLink II, as it was to be called, would have seen some $31 billion allocated to transport infrastructure across Australia.

Despite the Labor Party trying to call a spade something else—they often talk about these ‘shovel-ready’ programs, which sounds good on the media at night—Labor are ignoring the road and rail needs of regional Australia. Despite all their rhetoric about nation building in the 2009-10 financial year, funding for land transport infrastructure will be lower in 2008-09 by about $2 billion. They have taken the dollars and stretched them out further, rebadged the program, called it nation building, but when you go to the detail you find the devil. The Treasurer’s fingers are all over it, stripping the money away and stretching it out over a longer period of time. The Prime Minister and his transport minister keep claiming that they are stimulating the economy through infrastructure funding. Yet, while they are happy to throw fistfuls of cash in the form of $900 cheques to people who may have worked in Australia for six months but now live overseas, they have taken away money from important road projects. For instance, there is no funding for major infrastructure programs in rural Queensland. In Minister Albanese’s second reading speech, he boasts of projects being funded in Queensland. Well, I went and had a look. The furthest west the funding goes is Ipswich—half an hour west of the Brisbane CBD. I should invite the minister out to show him where the real resource centre of Australia is, and that there is more to Queensland than just the south-east corner. There is a lot more to Queensland than that, as I am sure the member for Dawson would agree.

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