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

What an extraordinary contribution from the Leader of the Nationals! The electorates in which black spots on the national program network are intended to be funded are on the list I tabled. Just to name one state, Victoria, there is: Mallee, Ballarat, Mallee, Gippsland, Ballarat, Murray, Wannon, Mallee, Mallee, Mallee, Murray, Wannon, Gippsland, Wills, Indi and Indi. They are the projects, the same projects that the member for Gippsland was up there saying should be funded and was having his photo in the local paper as a result of. Now the Leader of the National Party, his party, says they are a rort. It is absolutely extraordinary.

The Leader of the National Party knows that a number of dangerous black spots are indeed on the national network, particularly in areas where the national network goes through regional centres. That is what this change will recognise. His amendment seeks to stop this funding of the Black Spot Program that he has acknowledged is in record terms. We have more than doubled funding for black spots.

The second amendment goes to the Strategic Regional Program. The Leader of the National Party says that under the former government’s program, under the Strategic Regional Program, funding could not take place for urban roads. There was $2 million for the Campbell Parade upgrade at Bondi Beach, in the electorate of Wentworth, funded under the Strategic Regional Program. In the electorate of Bennelong there were at least three projects. In the electorate of Hasluck there was another project. In marginal electorates right around the country, funded by the National Party through the Strategic Regional Program, it was not about where the road was; it was about the margin of the electorate. It was about not the road map but the electoral map. That was the way that the previous government determined its road funding.

The record is there. The opportunism is exposed completely. I am not sure whether he is trying to mislead the House or whether it is simply that he has forgotten what the previous government did when it was in office. I say this to the member for Gippsland, who was in his local paper and who is in the chamber here: this amendment moved by the leader of his party would stop the funding of the black spot where he got the photo taken that was in his local paper, published last week. That is what it would do. So he needs to be very clear. He is on the spot here and he needs to be clear. If he votes for this amendment, he is voting against funding that black spot in his electorate, and he should tell the Leader of the National Party that he is simply wrong in this. He has simply got it wrong, because they have not come to terms with the fact that one of the reasons why they are on the opposition benches is their failure to invest in infrastructure over 12 long years of government.

See this speech in context