Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased the member raised this motion. It gives me the opportunity to tie together two things—the theme that I raised in the other chamber earlier this day in relation to the standard of our politics, and infrastructure issues. Certainly we salute the idea of infrastructure as being important for nation building and the future of our nation. Downstairs I spoke about wanting to raise political standards in relation to gender balance, but also in relation to comments made by Senator Molan in the Senate in this building. He has resorted to the lowest form of personal abuse and character assassination in his comments directed at me. In all my time involved in politics, I have never personally insulted or impugned the integrity of any person in this place, ever. I have never personally impugned another member in this place.

An honourable member: On the record!

On the record, and off the record as well. I never impugned anyone's credibility or integrity in this place—never. So the conduct of the senator is quite dishonourable, and I would like him to review that conduct, considering in particular that we have been friends for the last 20 years and I have defended him assiduously against allegations that he was responsible for war crimes in Iraq, which I think were scurrilous assertions. So I would ask him to reconsider his approach to politics. He's only been in this business for five minutes and has already sunk to this degree, possibly under the influence of advisers.

The comments that he made were in association with so-called 'benefits projects' in Eden-Monaro in the budget under infrastructure. He said, 'In my home of Eden-Monaro,' and then went on to refer to a $100 million investment in the Monaro Highway upgrade. Every single cent of that $100 million will be spent in the ACT, so this is money not being spent in Eden-Monaro at all. So it is disingenuous and misleading to state that.

Senator Molan has also commented on a hundred million dollars being allocated to the Barton Highway upgrade package. The coalition—Senator Seselja and many others—have been out there claiming they support full duplication of the Barton Highway and saying they're going to spend this money on it. When we look at it, there's $15 million allocated this financial year. That's going to tree trimming, safety barriers, signage et cetera. Not one cent of that is going to duplication. Then we had the admission, which was pursued by the Yass Tribune, that the $100 million is actually out there in the forward estimates. It's not going to be allocated to duplication, because they've indicated there's going to be a business case into duplication. You can't go out there and say, 'We are going to duplicate,' or, 'There is a commitment to duplication' if you're saying that it all depends on a business case which we're yet to see the details of.

I contrast that with the complete and direct commitment by both the state Labor opposition and the federal Labor opposition, which say, 'We will do full duplication of the Barton Highway if our governments are elected on the usual 80-20 per cent split.' The reason we're so committed is that that project is critical to the economic health of the entire region of southern New South Wales, because we want to exploit the potential in the Port of Eden. That's another disingenuous comment made by Mr Molan—he's claimed that there's $10 million that has been dedicated by the government to the Port of Eden project, with some being allocated from that this year. Every single cent of that $10 million was won by me and put in the bank in June 2013. It's been sitting there, waiting for this project to get rolling. So the money that's being allocated now is against that $10 million, and it was our money; it was Labor's money towards that project. The Port of Eden offers us huge potential in tourism benefits. When that wharf extension project is completed, we'll be able to bring in massive cruise liners at least once a week, which will be bringing in potentially 2,000 tourists at a pop. It will be a great benefit. I want to pay tribute to state coalition colleagues who've weighed in for the extra money to make that project a goer. It shows that we're all signing up to the vision and potential of the Port of Eden.

Our cherry growers in the west want to come across and start using international freight out of Canberra Airport. Our oyster growers on the coast—all our great primary producers in this region—want to use the potential that Canberra international airport provides us. The Barton Highway will be a key piece of that, including for the upgrades of the Visy pulp mill and also for the benefits of the renewable energy projects we're going to see. So this is critical infrastructure. I'd just ask the government to get on with it.

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