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

Let me respond to a couple of the questions that have been raised. I thank the honourable member for Lyne for his reference to the Community Grants Program that this government is funding. There are around 300 projects to be funded through this program, with a total expenditure of $340 million. This will mean projects in almost every community. I know that there are a number of projects in the electorate of the honourable member for Lyne. It also includes funding for 53 projects which the previous government had announced but never contracted or funded from rounds 2, 3 and 4 of the Regional Development Program. Those projects were announced but never proceeded, and we are picking up the bill for the Labor Party's commitments in that regard.

I can also respond positively to the member's question about the new National Stronger Regions Program. This program will provide $1 billion over five years for projects in regional communities and disadvantaged areas—places of low socioeconomic status or high unemployment—to help provide economic benefit and stimulus to those communities. I have no doubt that that program will provide real benefits to local communities—in particular, the projects in areas such as the one represented by the member for Lyne. I was pleased to be with him for the opening of the U3A, and there are a number of those projects that are proceeding very strongly in his electorate.

The honourable member for Wright asked about the Toowoomba range project, which he rightly identified as one that had no support from the previous government but which we have now brought to fruition. On 12 June there will be a meeting in Toowoomba which potential contractors will be invited to attend for a briefing on the construction project. This project will be built as a PPP. We are looking for the private sector to be engaged in the design and construction of the project and eventually the management and collection of the tolls. It will be a very substantial engineering project—probably the biggest road-building construction in regional Australia's history—and it will make such a difference to the lifestyle of the people who live in Toowoomba. It is indeed a worthwhile project.

The Commonwealth has agreed to provide 80 per cent of the cost not met by the private sector. We are anxious to ensure this is a quality project. The innovation of the private sector will be brought to bear so that we end up with the kind of project that the people of Toowoomba want and which delivers real transport benefits to the whole national freight network. I think this is an exciting project, and it will certainly transform Toowoomba and improve the quality of life for the people of that city.

Moving onto a couple of other issues that have been raised, can I again go back to the comments in relation to Infrastructure Australia: yes, we have committed that every project valued over $100 million will be subjected to IA scrutiny, and those reports will be made public.

What I find quite amazing is this idea that some members opposite seek to peddle that somehow Infrastructure Australia was influential in the decisions they made about infrastructure. The reality is: every single project announced by the previous government was announced before it went anywhere near Infrastructure Australia. They were playing catch-up. They were giving blanket approvals to what the government had already decided to do. Their whole global financial crisis response package was all announced before it went anywhere near Infrastructure Australia; indeed some of those projects have never proceeded—they were of such little merit. How about the O-Bahn project in South Australia dreamed up—

A government member: Parramatta to Epping.

That wasn't on that particular package, but Parramatta-Epping was of course a favourite project of the minister and the former Infrastructure coordinator; in fact, he worked on it as an engineer in his previous iteration before those days. It has never gone anywhere. It would never pass any kind of a test of that nature, yet the previous government had announced it.

So Infrastructure Australia spent its life under the previous government playing catch-up. We want to change that and get them out in front identifying the key projects before they are announced. (Time expired)

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