Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Politics is full of rich ironies, but there is no richer irony than the member for Ballarat pontificating on the subject of public administration. She's right to ask what the Auditor-General has said about particular matters, and let me quote one thing the Auditor-General had to say:

Under the third and fourth rounds, which are the subject of this performance audit report, more than $226 million in grant funding was awarded to 121 capital infrastructure projects by the then Minister for Regional Services …

…   …   …

…   …   …

…   …   …

That is the Auditor-General's assessment of the conduct of the member for Ballarat. Is there a more ludicrous spectacle than somebody who has been so roundly, appropriately and justifiably criticised by the Auditor-General coming in here and pontificating about standards in government?

Of course, it goes well beyond the member for Ballarat. Here's another report from the Auditor-General that I'd like to direct the attention of the House to. It spoke about a particular regional local community infrastructure program. It said that, in one instance, the relevant minister 'made an explicit decision to approve an application that was known to be otherwise ineligible under the Guidelines'. It went on to say that the relevant minister 'explicitly decided to waive the project eligibility criteria for an application they wished to fund'. In another example of what seems to be a track record or a consistent pattern of behaviour from the other side of the House, the report states that 'the awarding of funding to projects also disproportionately favoured ALP held seats'.

Who was this Auditor-General's report about? It was about the then minister for infrastructure, the member for Grayndler, the Leader of the Opposition. And the member for Ballarat has just come in here and advanced the ludicrous proposition that somehow the Labor Party are going to be the bringers of some new high standard of public administration—a claim which is frankly delusional and utterly at odds with the clear documentary evidence from a series of Auditor-General's reports.

When we talk about delusional, we can go to many of the things that the shadow minister ran through in her speech that we've just heard. But there's a charge that's more serious than 'delusional'. It is the frankly disgusting characterisation by the member for Ballarat, and by the opposition, of the vaccine rollout. Our nation faces the biggest public health challenge in a hundred years, and the opposition is desperately talking it down. They are willing the vaccine rollout to fail. They need to have a good look at themselves, because it is hard to find a more depressing instance of political behaviour when we and all fair-minded Australians—all Australians of goodwill, including, I might say, Labor governments around the country—are working in a determined fashion to get Australia through this challenge and to build on the growing success of the vaccine rollout with 17.4 million doses now having gone into arms around Australia. All Australians of goodwill want this to succeed, they're willing it on, but there's one group of Australians who want to see it fail, and we've heard that again today. That's a clear inference that can be drawn from the very disappointing comments of the member for Ballarat.

We hear a clear and consistent pattern of misstatement of fact from the shadow minister when she refers to particular matters of public administration under this government. Once again, we heard a tired, factually incorrect claim about the Leppington Triangle. It seems that the opposition think you can buy 13.62 hectares of land in Western Sydney, on the outer fringes of that growing metropolitan area, just near the Western Sydney airport, for $3 million. It seems that's what they believe. Well I say to them: good luck with that! Go out to Western Sydney and offer to buy 13.62 hectares for $3 million. That is the substance of their indignant claim—that there was some problem that the land was bought for $30 million rather than $3 million.

Don't take my opinion on this matter, Mr Deputy Speaker. I refer you to an independent audit provided by the respected consultancy Sententia, commissioned by department of infrastructure, which had this to say:

The determination of the amount to pay for a property is a judgement. Officers exercised that judgement in the case of the Leppington Triangle, and paid a price per square metre that is not inconsistent with numerous recent transactions in the region. This land will be a part of a multibillion dollar airport precinct with significant long-term benefit to the Australian people and the Australian economy.

Sententia also had this to say:

There is no question that there were process weaknesses in how the acquisition was completed … However, addressing those process weaknesses would not have allowed the Commonwealth to acquire the land for $3 million.

That is the view from an independent audit of this set of circumstances, which the shadow minister continues to wilfully misrepresent.

Let's turn to the question of commuter car parks. The shadow minister, as well as the member for Scullin, in his brief escape from the obscurity within which he has previously dwelled for many years, has been seeking to mount the argument that there is somehow a distinction to be drawn between the desirability of Commonwealth funding for commuter car parks at Mango Hill, at Gosford, at Woy Woy, at Panania, at Hurstville, at Mandurah, at Riverwood, at Frankston, at Campbelltown and at St Marys. The proposition that we have, as best as can be discerned from the confusing garble from the member for Scullin, appears to be that when funding is committed to those commuter car parks by the Labor Party, as it unquestionably was in the 2019 election, that's a good thing, but when it's done by the coalition it automatically becomes, through some mysterious alchemy, a bad thing. That is the argument. That is what the member for Scullin is pleased to describe as an argument.

He went on to say this: 'Oh, we all understand that congestion is a major problem in Australia. We all understand the pressures on commuters and the importance of enabling people to have more efficient trips to work, and commuter car parks provide a vital role.' So they do. That indeed goes to the underlying policy rationale which, as the member for Scullin found very difficult to deny, is the rationale for the policy advanced by Labor and the policy advanced by the coalition. He seeks desperately to distinguish. He says, 'But they need to be determined on need and evidence, not the whim of political parties.' That apparently is the basis on which a distinction is to be drawn between the conduct of the Labor Party and the conduct of the coalition. How is he to explain, against that high-minded test he has set, the fact that the member for Maribyrnong, the then Leader of the Opposition, announced the park-and-ride fund—Labor's version, worth $300 million—on one day and then the very next day turned up in Gosford saying, 'We should have a commuter car park here'? Where is the need and evidence? Where is the deep scientific basis that is apparently the distinction between two sides of parliament? There is none. The fact is that Labor's claims that they offer some high-minded new spirit of public administration are rightly laughed at by anybody who has even the barest understanding of what they did in their chaotic years in government. (Time expired)

See this speech in context