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

Just in continuation on the issue around CEDA, the Prime Minister said:

… $1 billion will be allocated to priority projects which are shovel-ready, and being smaller projects they’re ready to go.

In October, it was revealed that, of 87 projects announced, all but three were still in planning. Would the minister agree that this, for what was supposed to be economic stimulus, is too slow? I'm not sure what definitions the Prime Minister is using for 'ready to go' and 'shovel ready' but they certainly aren't ones that would be commonly understood by most people. Is the minister aware of anymore projects through the scheme that have actually gotten underway?

I will just move very quickly to regions, as I understand that there may be some divisions happening. I do echo the questions that my colleague has asked around Regional Partnerships, which are the 10 regions that have been chosen by the government. It does seem passing strange that, when the regions that are meant to be targeted are those that have been specifically affected by drought and bushfire, the two regions that two Labor members hold have been left out of this program. I think that is, unfortunately, really indicative of the way in which this government has been approaching regional funding for quite a long period of time.

I particularly want to mention the Community Development Grants Program. We accept that, in the election grants fund that the government has, the election is the selection process and that there is some due diligence that is done after that. But I do want to highlight that in the budget papers, according to table 2.3.1 in the department's budget statement, the government intends to increase expenditure on the Community Development Grants Program to $270 million in 2021-22 and $318 million in 2022-23. Can the minister confirm that in 2016-17, the budget for this program was $66 million?

We also see—which is very unusual, I would have to say—that the government, outside of an election period, is adding substantially to this program. The budget papers talk about three projects. One is the $23 million new Rockhampton Stadium in Victoria Park. This is a program and there is no application process. The government just says, 'Here, we have this money for you.' This is the project where we saw Pauline Hanson of the One Nation Party standing up with a big $23 million cheque saying that she was funding the Rockhampton Stadium. Then there are the Regional Indoor Aquatic and Leisure Centre at Mount Barker and the Goolwa Sports Precinct in South Australia, neither of which have been through an election process for selection and neither of which, as we understand it, has actually had a business case or had due diligence done on them. I ask the minister: do you think this is at all appropriate? Can the minister assure us that, in the next round of the Building Better Regions Fund, round 5, which we understand is to be opened shortly, there will be greater consideration or more equitable consideration given to the seats that Labor members hold?

I also want to highlight, in particular, a few of the issues that we've seen across the Drought Communities Program. Again, there's been some criticism about the lack of transparency and the lack of the way in which that funding has been allocate across the community, and, again, I ask the minister: can he assure this place that regional funding will be done on a more equitable basis the next time around?

I want to highlight again the government's Regional Deals program, three of which are underway. I think there are many communities—in fact, I don't think my colleague would have a local government council in regional Australia not coming to him saying, 'We've worked really hard and we've put together a regional deal. We'd like to know how you access some of the funding for that.' Can the government confirm that there is no process for that to actually happen and that there's no clarity around what constitutes a regional deal or how that would occur?

We talked a bit about decentralisation or, as we say, regionalisation. Has the government actually considered that, if it just put back all of the Public Service jobs from the Medicare offices and Veterans' Affairs into regional communities, it would boost jobs substantially in our regions? (Time expired)

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