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

There are a number of questions that were asked throughout the debate, here, and I will try and answer as many of those as I can in the short period of time we've got left. I'd say, particularly to the member for Kooyong—and I'm really happy to facilitate this—this is a project of the Northern Territory government. It's really critical to put the Northern Territory economy onto a footing where it starts to get revenue to be able to provide services for the people of the Northern Territory. Without it, their budget is in huge trouble, and frankly, I really would encourage you to go and talk to them. I'd go and have a look at the project. The environmental approvals have, obviously, not been given yet. There is a process that has to be gone through, both from the state planning point of view and the federal point of view, and I will leave that, respectfully, to the planning and environment ministers to do. My job as the infrastructure minister is to look at where we can invest to help economies to grow. They've had already, as I understand it—having viewed the project myself—over 30 different expressions of interest from investors. The large proportion of those are from clean energy investors, but I really would encourage you to go and have a look and talk to them, and understand from the Northern Territory government's perspective why this is so critical to them for the future of the Northern Territory.

I do want to make a couple of points to those opposite. I think they were in government for so long that they've got to the point where they've failed to understand the difference between a decision of government and an election commitment. To the member for Cowper, particularly: in relation to the Southern Cross University, that was an election commitment. Whilst the March budget contained a measure for education infrastructure, no decisions of government had actually been taken as to where that funding would happen, let alone the money even having been appropriated in the budget. Senator McKenzie went around the country during the election campaign announcing this was how she would spend the money, if re-elected. She did that in my own community. My university was absolutely adamant and understood that that was an election commitment. I explained that to them. The member for Cowper clearly has not understood the difference between a decision of government and an election commitment.

I'm really proud of the commitments this budget makes to regional Australia. We are, in fact, increasing, over a 10-year period, money under the Infrastructure Investment Program for our regions, and we are increasing the number of projects that are across regional Australia as well. It really does go to the breadth and depth of our regions across the country, whether it is major projects in Victoria and Tasmania, in Queensland with the Bruce Highway, and along the Tanami in the Northern Territory, which I visited recently. These are hugely life-changing projects for many of the communities along the Tanami. This is what we're delivering through this budget.

We do know that there are significant problems with local roads at the moment. It is why, discussed during the election campaign and delivered through this budget, we've increased the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure fund by $250 million for regional, rural and periurban communities, taking this round up to $750 million. That will certainly go a long way to help many of the regional communities who are desperately looking to try and upgrade and improve their roads at the moment. We are investing $80 million to deliver heavy vehicle rest areas.

I'd say again to the member for Barker, who made some claims that the budget had delayed projects: projects are delayed. That is what's happening across the country at the moment; I don't know if he's noticed. The front page of his own newspaper in South Australia is clearly saying it. Projects are delayed, and they're delayed for a whole range of reasons, but one of them is that the previous government was so focused on getting press releases out, getting their pamphlets out and standing up there and saying, 'This is a media opportunity,' that they never committed enough money for half these projects. So we've got a significant problem in relation to actually getting these projects delivered because the previous government was so focused on the press releases and the rah-rah around them rather than on actually delivering them in the first place.

We also know that there are labour constraints and skills shortages. We've got significant problems. So the budget doesn't delay projects; projects are delayed, and we have had to align the funding in the budget with the actual delivery so that we don't have significant underspend in infrastructure, as we did under the previous government, of billions of dollars that we could not get out the door. That's billions of dollars we couldn't get out the door under the previous government that would have been employing people, flowing through regional economies and actually ensuring the economic growth of the future. I'm determined that we'll get the infrastructure investment pipeline and clean up the mess that has been left by the previous government. We've got a long way to go yet, but I'm very proud that this budget starts that process, commits more money to the regions and makes sure we have fair and equitable funding across all regions, not just those that the National Party holds.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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