Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I'm quite confused about what the government is saying about our period in government. When we were in government and they were in opposition, the big claim was made that this minister, this minister and this minister were pork-barrelling. What does pork-barrelling mean? It means you're rushing money into seats that don't deserve it. So we're actually accused of doing too much. I'm sure the member for Casey, the member for Menzies and the member for Longman are accused of the same thing: 'There's far too much money going into your seats. It's just colour coded. It's not done properly. There's no rationale for it. You're pork-barrelling.' That's what we'd hear every day. When I was accused of pork-barrelling, I'd say, 'I'm just a good advocate for my community; I'm fighting for my community, trying to get programs and resource for my community.'

But now that's changed. I'm sure you've heard it. You heard it today from the minister, and you've just heard it from the member for Solomon.

It turned out that, no, we weren't pork-barrelling; we actually didn't do anything! We were just all press releases and no delivery apparently. So we were pork-barrelling when in government, with far too much money and far too many resources going into communities, and then we were all press releases and no delivery. That's very confusing. I think they're confused about how they are trying to attack us.

What is true is what the member for Gippsland just said previously. What is very true is what the assistant minister and the regional minister in this space love right now. Don't get them between them and a pair of scissors and a ribbon, because they want to open everything—and they are. The one fact about this is it's money and projects that were promised and delivered by the previous government. They will not miss an opportunity for doing that. In fact, in some cases—get this!—not only are they running to the scissors to cut the ribbon; they won't let the member who fought for that project attend. Because they want to go, they tell them then they're not allowed to come. So there's a lot of mixed messaging there from the government.

This is serious stuff. Infrastructure is serious stuff. Infrastructure is about roads. Infrastructure is about community assets. The minister's review going from 90 to 120 days is dangerous. It's dangerous for communities. I'll tell you how they think. I'll tell you how that side of parliament thinks. A previous Labor Prime Minister who is a hero of theirs, although I don't think he would agree with a lot of what they are doing, Paul Keating, cracked a joke. In deference to my Liberal friends, his joke was that all he ever heard from the Nat MPs when he was Treasurer was that they wanted to build roads to nowhere. They still think that's funny. It's not funny for us, because those roads are from our houses, our farms and our communities to hospitals. They are roads to get us to school. They're roads for when people have to get out of places in emergencies and they have to be able to do it safely and quickly. So it was a big funny joke from the Labor Party. It's how they still think, which is why they say money to regional electorates is pork-barrelling. It's completely unacceptable.

Let's move on to the other issue, and that is Qatar Airways. We've got a situation where an airline is flying into Australia. They have approval to fly into Australia and they applied for quite a modest increase of 28 flights a week. The minister has said no. That happens. We understand that. But we want to know why. We want to know what the department's advice was. Did the department advise this? We want to know the rationale for the decision. She's saying national interest. If it is not in the national interest for them to get an extra 28 flights, what is in the national interest for their existing flights? What is in the national interest that they don't get the extra flights? There has been no rationale for that. This is serious as well. We want to know who advised her of this. She's been asked about conversations with CEOs of other airlines and what motivated her decision on this. It's a dangerous decision she's made for the tourism sector. The international flight arrivals with international tourists are 40 per cent below where they were pre pandemic. Our tourism destinations need these extra international flights. They are going to make flights cheaper for Australians as well.

There is another aspect of this as well, and that is exporting. In the bellies of those planes will be export products. This minister has made a bad decision and needs to explain it.

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