Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No-one doubts for a moment the importance of having programs like the Black Spot Program that identify areas where accidents have occurred—either accidents where people haven't experienced massive injury or, in those very unfortunate cases, where there has been either injury or death. We don't want people to have to go through that. We don't want the economy to go through the impact of $27 billion of costs attached as a result of road accidents.

We should use public funds wisely to improve public safety. But there are problems with the management of these programs. This government has sponged up taxpayer dollars and made decisions that the public expect to be fairly made. It's completely broken. No-one can trust this government, with the political corruption that has gone on in the grant programs. There is no better evidence of that than what happened with the sports rorts. Money was deliberately siphoned off to help the political interests of the government.

Now we find that it is in road funding too, in an area that is supposed to have an impact on reducing congestion in some of our most congested cities in the country. We find that 83 per cent of road funding was assigned by this government in a politically corrupt way to benefit people in marginal seats or others being targeted. This is not something new. And it was reported in The Australianof all places! This is a media outlet the government would expect more than usual political comfort from. But they put on their front page the electorates that will benefit the most from road funding—and this particular road funding is designed to improve either safety or congestion—and it is government electorate after government electorate that has been handed funding. You can see how government areas benefited way more than anyone else.

In the electorate that I represent we need investment in the new major motorway going next to us and in decongesting rail lines to improve people movement in my part of Western Sydney. We need investment to help remove black spots like the Francis Road bottleneck in Rooty Hill. But no funding has been provided to the Chifley electorate. But the electorate next door was targeted by the Liberals, with $180 million worth of promises splashed in one electorate alone. This government has given up on having even a semblance of impartiality, fairness or balance. They basically pick up taxpayer funds, turn them into a political levy, and then apply for their mates in their areas. This is simply wrong. It is corrupt. It is breaking the trust in the way that governments make decisions, and it has to end.

The Urban Congestion Fund is just another instance of this money getting picked up and thrown around. Eighty-three per cent of the funding decisions went to government. This is wrong. It is wrong, and people should be held accountable for it. We are sick of the minister for population, who I have dubbed the 'minister for roundabouts', getting up and saying that his big contribution to decongestion and better people movement is that he's funded a roundabout here or there in, obviously, key marginals that the government wants to hold on to. It is not good enough. The Australian people and particularly Australian taxpayers deserve better. We should get to a system where these types of decisions are made much more independently. It is why Labor has called for ages for Infrastructure Australia to be given that independent mandate to make those decisions, instead of what we have got here, which is basically cronyism, corruption and political campaigns being buttressed by taxpayer dollars. It is an absolute disgrace.

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