Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to contribute to this matter of public importance debate. The Infrastructure Australia priority list released today is a reminder of just how important it is to have an independent body establishing the infrastructure priorities of the nation. Labor established Infrastructure Australia to take some of the politics out of infrastructure funding and to establish a long-term pipeline of projects for the nation. Water infrastructure has been highlighted today, but there is also the growing problem of urban congestion choking our cities. If ever we needed a reminder of why it is important to take the politics out of the allocation of infrastructure funding, we've had it this week with the revelations about how this government has treated its Urban Congestion Fund.

This week it was exposed that the Liberal and National parties are addicted to rorting infrastructure funding. Labor uncovered that, of the $3 billion allocated for the Urban Congestion Fund, $2.5 billion—some 83 per cent—went to Liberal seats and seats that were being targeting by the Liberal Party.

Mr Hogan interjecting—

I hear the member interjecting. I want to go again to this issue: the $3 billion. This isn't just a small grants program; this is $3 billion of public funding that the Liberal and National parties have rorted for their own political interest. That is what you have done. You have rorted it for your own political interests: $3 billion, 83 per cent of which went to coalition seats and seats you were targeting in the 2019 election campaign. More than $2.1 billion, or 70 per cent, went to Liberal seats alone. The poor old Nats didn't get a look in on the Urban Congestion Fund—not a cent. Seventy per cent went to seats held by the Liberal Party. Across the country, projects went to every single urban Liberal seat that was marginal or under threat. The Morrison government even extended urban congestion funding to four marginal seats in regional Australia. Meanwhile, 37 urban and regional city Labor seats missed out completely.

Let's look at a few specific examples from around the country. The Prime Minister found $290 million for four congestion-busting projects in the seat of Higgins, but Lalor in Melbourne's west, where commuters have to get to the car park before 7 am to get a spot, did not get a single dollar. Over in South Australia, the two marginal Liberal seats received 58 per cent of the funds allocated to that state, but there was nothing for Hindmarsh, Kingston or Spence. In New South Wales, the marginal Liberal seat of Robertson scored 94 per cent of the $105 million allocated for the New South Wales Central Coast, leaving residents in neighbouring Dobell stuck in the slow lane. Up in Queensland, Brisbane Road on the Sunshine Coast in the Liberal seat of Fisher received $12 million, but the Labor seat of Griffith in the heart of Brisbane didn't receive a single cent. Of course, the Liberals cared so little about urban congestion in Brisbane, they refused to spend a dollar on Cross River Rail, which for years was Infrastructure Australia's No.1 congestion-busting project. Over in Perth, every single individual project went to a Liberal seat. The Attorney-General's marginal seat of Pearce received the biggest prize in the west: five projects worth $10 million.

Does this Prime Minister really think that congestion stops when drivers hit a road that isn't on his partisan list of political priorities? On Monday, we asked him: do think this was fair? The Prime Minister's only defence was that the projects were all election commitments. However, we know this is simply not true. The Urban Congestion Fund was established in the 2018 budget, a year before the election. We also saw that nothing happened in the first year of that fund. There were no guidelines. There was no transparency. There was no call for applications for any of this funding. When you establish a fund with a strategic purpose a year before an election, do nothing and then suddenly roll out projects just before and during an election—I don't know what else to call it but, simply and utterly, a slush fund. An absolute and utter rort is what it was. The Prime Minister couldn't even speak to the alleged benefits of it. This Urban Congestion Fund has been a— (Time expired)

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