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

Around Australia right now and around our world, there is a lot going on. We have the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. We're perhaps looking, here in Australia, at a double-dip recession. We have a pandemic raging. We have half the country in lockdown. And, behind it all, we have climate change continuing at pace. The role of government has perhaps never been more important. But, instead of having a government capable of doing its job, we have a government that is simply not up to the job.

It's perhaps fitting today that the Prime Minister revealed that he's getting his COVID lessons from the children's film The Croods. For those who don't have the joy of small children, The Croods is the story of a group of cave-dwellers who get swept from one chaotic disaster to another—often of their own making—and never quite come to grips with what's going on. It's hard to think of a better metaphor for this government, because, when you look over the course of this government and this prime ministership, all you see is one disaster after another, one crisis after another—often of their own making—and somehow them being surprised that: 'Oh, we're in government and we're responsible for trying to do something about it.'

First came the bushfires. As communities across Australia burnt, the Prime Minister relaxed on a Hawaiian beach. When fire chiefs warned of unprecedented conditions, he told them not to worry. When Australians were rescued off the beach at Mallacoota, he was knocking down pina coladas. When Australians wanted leadership, he told us he didn't hold a hose. While firefighters desperately called for help, he claimed that they wanted to be there. The only thing he offered them was a forced handshake.

Then, when the pandemic began, he went to the Rugby League. He told us it wasn't a race. He told us quarantine was someone else's problem. He told us not to lock down.

When Australian women cried out for respect and safety, the Prime Minister told us we were lucky we weren't being shot. He could only relate to the alleged rape of a young woman when he was told to view it through the context of his own family. Then, instead of supporting the survivor, his office briefed against her loved ones.

He failed to heed the warnings of veterans to evacuate our allies from Afghanistan in time. Instead, he abandoned those who'd served beside our troops.

Under this Prime Minister, we've had robodebt; we've had the dud NBN; we've had jobs for mates, rising childcare costs, stagnant wages, cuts to Medicare and plummeting numbers of trainees and apprentices. We've had whatever the minister for energy's latest scandal is—something to do with a charter flight and Liberal donors in the Beetaloo; it's hard to keep up with his mishaps. Because of the failed vaccine rollout and failures in quarantine, we've got kids stuck at home, missing out on the education they deserve, and small businesses going to the wall. We're all tired of it; we're despairing of when we're going to get out of it, because this Prime Minister failed to do his job. There's a lot wrong with this Prime Minister, but there's always a pretty consistent theme. It's always someone else's problem, always someone else's fault. It's always about him. He's slow to act, but he's really quick to blame.

Having failed so badly at rolling out the vaccine in time and fixing the problems with national quarantine, there is one thing where he's at the head of the pack, where he's winning the race, and that is rorts. We've had sports rorts, where $100 million was used to target marginal seats. The minister went to the back bench for a little time. But of course she's back, because, according to the Prime Minister, she did absolutely nothing wrong.

We've had the Safer Communities Fund rorts. There were communities which were worried about crime rates and looked to local councils, who looked for cameras and lighting in their communities to try to prevent crime in their areas. We had 91 per cent of the $30 million third round ending up in government-held, Independent or marginal seats. That's what happened. Apparently, community safety is only needed in marginal seats, not anywhere else!

We've had, of course, regional rorts, where hundreds of projects were funded by a panel of ministers, despite not having been recommended by the Public Service, and the coalition-held target seats received 94 per cent of 94 per cent of the funds. We've of course had the Leppington Triangle. The minister here at the desk was responsible for paying $30 million for a piece of land that was valued by the department of infrastructure at only $3 million—something that the minister at the desk thinks was perfectly sensible. And, of course, we had car park rorts, where $660 million was allocated, based on a top 20 marginal electorate spreadsheet shared with the Prime Minister's office. That's what this government has been doing with its time. We had the Prime Minister's office hand-picking projects for car park rorts. He cannot deny his own personal involvement in that, because the Audit Office pointed to him directly and to his role and his responsibility in it.

The Prime Minister has never seen a taxpayer fund that he hasn't wanted to use for his own political purposes. His one guiding interest in every single thing that he does, in everything that he does, whether it's the use of taxpayer money or whether it's his failures in the vaccine rollout and quarantine, is his own political interest, not the national interest. He cares nothing for protecting taxpayers' money or good public governance. It is all about his political interest.

What we saw happen with car park rorts was a massive failure of public administration. We have seen what the government learnt from sports rorts. It was not that you don't have a process. They called for community members across the country to put in applications and they had a process where they'd be assessed by the department—and then, of course, they were obviously ignored. What this government seems to have learnt from sports rorts and its other rorts is to just not have a process at all, to basically just say: let's pick 20 seats that are all marginal that we want to win in this campaign; let's allocate the funding according to that, between the Prime Minister's office and the minister's office.

To be fair to the minister at the desk, he wasn't the minister at the time. He's trying to clean up this mess and, unfortunately, as a result, has had to cancel some of these projects because he knows that this has been an absolute disaster. The reality is that they've have been unable to deliver the car parks because they were actually in the wrong spot. They were where there were no actual train stations, or where train stations were going to be cancelled. They are where there was no land available for them to be put in the first place. They are unable to deliver them because of this administration. This is not just a small amount of money we are talking about. It's not just a one-off. It is $660 million out of a $4.7 billion Urban Congestion Fund.

We know that what the government have learnt by this rorting is that they will do it again. They've got over $2 billion in unspent Urban Congestion Fund money that is sitting there. Have they learnt their lesson? Have they said: 'We had better actually call for projects out of this Urban Congestion Fund'? Have they gone out to local councils and said: 'Here is a process. You can apply for this funding to deal with urban congestion'? No. They haven't done any of that. We know that they are going to do exactly the same thing in the lead-up to the next election. They are going to pick projects. They're already doing it now. They're talking to marginal seats, they're talking to candidates, they're talking to their patron senators in their duty electorates, saying, 'Where do we want to spend this money in order to further rort taxpayer funds for election purposes?'

This government cares nothing about protecting taxpayers' money or good public governance. It is all about them. Their policies, their statements and their beliefs change by the day, depending on what will help them win the news package or get a good headline. Even as they are wracking up trillions of dollars in debt they're doubling down. We know, as a result of the good work of our senators, that they have multiple slush funds for the run-up to the next political campaign. This is no way to run a country. You can't run a country like that in good times, let alone when we are in the trouble we are in today.

Australians deserve much better than a government that sees taxpayer funds as Liberal Party funds. They deserve much better than a government that does not believe we should have an Independent Commission Against Corruption. They deserve much better than a government that sees the sole purpose of being in government as staying in power, not helping people across this community. Australians deserve a government much better than this. They deserve an Albanese government.

See this speech in context