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

It is terrific to be able to continue the contribution that I was making last night on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 and related bills. I was saying that, despite the fact that Victoria is really only still slowly emerging from lockdown, much of the support is being withdrawn far too quickly, not just from Victoria but also from some of those sectors we know are going to take quite some time to recover, such as aviation and tourism. At the same time the government has been reducing JobKeeper and changing eligibility requirements, the Prime Minister's budget is also cutting the coronavirus supplement received by almost 25,000 in my own community. This will cut about $7.36 million per fortnight out of the local Ballarat economy. That's money that will not be available in our local economy.

We know that people who are on unemployment benefits and on those supplements are spending pretty much every dollar that they earn. So, let alone the impact that it has on individuals and the families that are supported by them, that withdrawal of $7.36 million a fortnight, while we are still recovering, has a huge impact. Based on average weekly earnings, it's equivalent to around 2,822 local jobs that could be had in our community if that money was still flowing. Our economy is still reeling. We need more money circulating in the local economy, not less. People receiving this supplement, as I said, are the very same people we know are likely to spend every single dollar that they receive. They are exactly the people that the budget should be supporting—those who need help most—but, again, they are the people the government has decided to leave behind.

At the same time, my community of Ballarat is once again missing out on infrastructure commitments through the budget—no Western Ring Road, no improvements to the Western Highway or the Midland Highway and no capital infrastructure works beyond the top-ups being given to every local council around the country. It is lovely to hear members opposite talk about the many projects that are being funded in their constituencies, but there is a stark contrast when you hear from people from this side of the chamber. When we have had a crisis that has affected every community, not just those held by Liberal and National seats, I really do caution the government about its business-as-usual approach when it comes to these regional buckets of funding. You can't treat regional communities differently just because of their political stripes.

We have seen lots of funds directed to set up further regional funding rounds in the budget—big buckets of money, controlled largely by the Deputy Prime Minister in their allocation—and we hope that we might be able to apply for some of these in the future. But, frankly, given the government's record of pork-barrelling, I am not holding my breath. The Deputy Prime Minister isn't even trying to hide that. On ABC Ballarat, the Deputy Prime Minister was asked, straight after the budget, why my own community of Ballarat missed out in the budget. The answer of the Deputy Prime Minister was, 'Maybe you need to look at your federal member.' That was the statement he made on our local radio station the day after the budget about why there wasn't money for Ballarat—that it is somehow my fault and the fault of the people of Ballarat because they vote for a Labor MP! He is not even trying to hide it. It is hugely problematic for those of us who represent millions of Australians that they are being sent the message very clearly, 'You might be suffering from COVID but don't look to us for any assistance.'

We all know that the Morrison government continually use infrastructure and regional development funding to electoral advantage. That is what they have been doing. The Deputy Prime Minister's comments on ABC Ballarat clearly show he is not even trying to hide it. He has just acknowledged that that is the case. Ahead of the last election, four regional Labor seats in Newcastle and the Hunter shared in just over $200,000 through the Community Development Grants Program—the program that the government largely uses to funnel its election commitments through, but it has been using it a bit more generously—I will be polite about it—a bit more unusually in recent days, with two of them receiving absolutely nothing and two neighbouring Nationals seats receiving $20 million each.

In the lead-up to the last election the Morrison government's signature Urban Congestion Fund funnelled 133 of 160 Urban Congestion Fund projects into Liberal and targeted seats. Recently 10 regions, mostly held by the coalition, were chosen because they were regions whose economies had experienced the brunt of natural events such as bushfire, COVID-19 and drought. But there was no funding for the New South Wales South Coast and no funding for the Blue Mountains, obviously held by Labor Party members. That's no way to deliver funding to the nation, particularly when we have had a crisis such as this.

The government likes to make big noises about its infrastructure commitments. They like the headlines that they generate, but again their delivery falls well short of expectations. Australians now know that with this long list of infrastructure projects hearing it is one thing, but they know that many of them will not be delivered for decades in some instances. They know this because they have seen an average infrastructure spend of $1.2 billion every single year, now up to $6.8 billion across the budgets of this government.

I will take just one project as an example of what is actually happening with the infrastructure budget, underspent each year by $1.2 billion—it was actually $1.7 billion last year. In this month's budget, again with much fanfare, the government announced that the Bolivia Hill upgrade of the New England Highway was being given additional funding. That sounds great, and the local community goes 'Thanks, we're getting more money for the highway.' The only problem is that that project, alongside a number of other projects that the government is counting, was actually funded by the now Leader of the Opposition back in 2012. The reason the project needs more money and the infrastructure budget has been boosted is the poor delivery and cost overruns, because the project hasn't actually been delivered. That's a cost blow-out; that's not stimulus. It's because the government has done such a poor job of delivery that it has had to put more money into this project.

Again we saw this underdelivery in the 2018 budget commitment, $806 million promised across financial years but promised last financial year through the Urban Congestion Fund. They got $142 million out the door. In New South Wales there was $200 million promised, and $4 million actually got out the door. These are small projects. These are roundabouts and pedestrian crossings and traffic lights. They are important to local communities, but we're not talking about big infrastructure planning required here. This is what has been happening. We all know what means: more empty announcements from the government, which cares more about the headline than it does about actually doing the work to deliver these projects.

Of course, after the week so far it is impossible to speak of the Morrison government's infrastructure program without mentioning the Leppington Triangle airport rort. This is a really serious scandal. The government, frankly, has not taken it seriously enough. We had the Deputy Prime Minister, again even yesterday, doubling down on this and saying that it's a bargain and a good investment. You would think, now that the AFP are scoping an investigation, that he would be a bit more cautious about what he says about this. We have a Deputy Prime Minister responsible for two of the largest infrastructure projects in a long time, the Western Sydney airport and the Inland Rail, and he thinks that spending $30 million on a piece of land worth $3 million—a tenth of the valuation—is a bargain and good value for taxpayers. This is a minister who is responsible for billions of dollars of infrastructure funding—Western Sydney airport and Inland Rail and countless others—hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure funding. If he thinks that is okay and is good value, what else is he ticking off that his department is doing? How can we trust any announcement by the government when you have a Deputy Prime Minister who thinks it is a bargain?

We have a Prime Minister who has initially brushed this off: 'It's a process issue in the department and it's all about process'—again not taking it seriously. Evidence at Senate estimates clearly shows that you have to be careful about the Morrison government's infrastructure promises. The department of infrastructure had actually factored in an order of $30 million for the purchase of this land even before the dodgy valuations were done or any acquisition process had commenced. I'm not sure what kind of acquisition process begins with the final price and works backwards from there; it's not one that I have ever seen or recognise. The government's response to the scandal to allow the department of infrastructure to hold more investigations into themselves, despite a previous interdepartmental investigation clearing any wrongdoing and the department failing to comply fully with the ANAO's initial inquiries around its financial statements, I think was worthy of further answers. That the AFP have now launched an investigation highlights just how flawed this is.

When it comes to infrastructure and their promises in the budget, it is impossible to believe what the government is saying. They could rebuild trust by stepping up and legislating a national integrity commission and ensuring that this deal is investigated properly and independently and that it does not happen again. We've again seen in this budget cuts to the Australian National Audit Office, the very body that has uncovered this scandal. This would not be in the public domain if someone in the ANAO had not questioned the financial statements of the department and then, when the department didn't provide them with accurate information, undertaken a performance audit. What has the government got to hide?

This stuff is incredibly important in the governance of this nation. It's symptomatic of a government that continually lets the Australian people down, none more so frankly than what's been happening in the aviation sector. We have seen this industry literally brought to its knees, whether it's the airports or whether it's the airlines and the multiple supports that are factored in around those. This is an industry that employs around 200,000 people overall. We've seen the government abandon dnata workers. We've seen the government say that a market solution to Virgin is the best thing since sliced bread. Well, we're about to see what that market is about to deliver, and we think it is going to be a reduced budget airline with less jobs and less routes, and every one of the lost jobs is on this government because it took the decision that it was not going to intervene in this. It wasn't going to intervene before the company went into administration and wasn't going to intervene or do anything to actually support Australian jobs by making sure the millions of dollars going to this company had some guarantee around work. We're seeing what's happening with Qantas and the outsourcing there as well. Again, this points very clearly to the failure of the government to actually have a national aviation plan that is in the national interests of this country, and it is absolutely disgraceful. (Time expired)

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