Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Just how disingenuous can this motion possibly be? The member for Forrest has congratulated the Turnbull Liberals on their investment in regional Western Australia, but the figures just do not hold up. The total government spend in the three rounds of the National Stronger Regions Fund was more than $630 million, and yet Western Australia, the state that takes up over a third of the country, with communities spread far further than in any other state, a state suffering from an economy in recession and a terrible Barnett Liberal government, received just $66 million from that pool. Maybe that is why the member for Forrest could not find one other Western Australian Liberal to speak in support of her motion here today.

But how has this happened? The answer lies in the nature of the projects funded. Three rounds of this program in WA chart the political course of this failed government. In round one of the program, we saw money flowing to only one suburban area in Perth in need of new infrastructure: Belmont. Then, take a look at round two: round two saw infrastructure funded in only one suburb again, in Rockingham. In round three, the outer suburban funding dries up altogether. This is the National Party's increasing stranglehold on the Abbott-Turnbull government on full display in the budget papers.

I am certainly not arguing the WA's remote and rural towns should not receive funding under this program. Of course, they should and they do. But outer suburban areas are in crisis across the country, particularly in Perth. High unemployment, combined with years of neglect from state and federal Liberal governments, has left existing local infrastructure in a state of disrepair and much-needed new infrastructure is non-existent. Perhaps most amusingly of all in this motion, is that it congratulates the government on a program that is actually being killed off by the Nationals anyway. There is no more National Stronger Regions Fund. It has been replaced by the Building Better Regions Fund. With this, the Turnbull government has proven once and for all that it does not care about outer suburban areas. But, as always with the Turnbull Liberals, keeping the conservatives inside the party happy takes precedence over all else, including investing funds where they are needed.

When areas in the seat of Canning, a metropolitan seat, were cut out of the program late last year, suddenly there was outrage from WA Liberals. In the Liberal world view, it is fine to cut funding from Armidale—after all, its local MPs, federal and state, are Labor—but when the National Party's knife comes to the suburban areas of Liberal seats there is an outrage. So the Prime Minister steps in and promises to change the rules so that this one metropolitan seat can take part in the program. It is a naked bid to shore up the member for Canning's ever decreasing margin. Though, given today's news reports about the member for Canning's activities with his fellow 'deplorables', the Prime Minister may be regretting that decision. This is apparently the way a good government works: outer suburban areas deserve no investment unless a Liberal seat is at risk.

I am regularly contacted by community groups in my area looking for funding grants from the federal government on infrastructure projects. While other programs exist for small projects, there is nothing that provides the substantial funding opportunities for infrastructure projects that will benefit entire communities. Why should our outer suburbs be put at a disadvantage simply to allow support for the National Party's seats and to support Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership? So congratulations to the Turnbull Liberal government on your now abolished, pork-barrelling, misguided National Stronger Regions Fund! Congratulations for nothing.

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