Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

In reality, the minister, by tabling in parliament the list of projects today that the government intends to fund—and it is the first time we have seen the list; it was not available just a day or two ago—proves that the government’s intent for this legislation is to shift money away from regional areas and into the cities. That is its intent: to take money from local projects and local accident spots and put it on the national highway, which the government should be adequately funding in the first place. The government is in effect stealing money from local streets, local roads and local projects to put on major projects on the national highway which will scoop up huge volumes of this money. Make no mistake, there will be many, many fewer projects funded under the Black Spot Program in the future than there were in the past because of the big-ticket items that the government is proposing to include in this item.

In relation to the regional projects, it is the same. We know that the Labor government are in trouble because their candidates at the last election were promising road projects all over the place and there is no funding available for those projects. So the Strategic Regional Program is to be changed to act as a slush fund for the Labor Party’s policy promises at the last election. Indeed, we have been told that $762.5 million of what is to be in this new off-network program has already been committed. Eighty-six per cent has already been committed to fund Labor’s election promises. But there was no avenue to fund them, because these projects were not eligible for funding under Black Spot or under the Strategic Regional Program. So they have got to change the program fundamentally; otherwise they have got a further funding shortfall. (Time expired)

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