Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Maybe the member for Hawke's not quite old enough to remember this, but everyone else is old enough to remember the TV show Seinfeld. Everyone remembers the show Seinfeld. There's one very famous episode in Seinfeld where Jerry and George pitch their ideas to a TV producer to develop what they call 'a show about nothing'. Sadly, when it comes to regional Australia, we are living through a Seinfeld government at a federal level. It's been a show about nothing, and regional Australians are worse off.

This Seinfeld government has failed to deliver for local communities. It's been divided. It's been distracted by a Canberra-knows-best attitude and has no interest in our local communities. They don't believe in locals and they don't trust us in the regions to make decisions that benefit our communities. I really only need to consider the performance of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government to demonstrate that this Seinfeld government has built nothing. The minister for infrastructure and transport, otherwise known as the minister for ribbon-cutting, wasted her first year in office and then, after wasting her first year in office, the minister for ribbon-cutting decided she needed a 90-day infrastructure review to decide on her future priorities. The only problem with the minister for infrastructure's 90-day review is that it took 200 days. This minister is the only person on the planet who would take five minutes to make two-minute noodles! She took 200 days for a 90-day review. This delay meant cost increases for projects, uncertainty and then project cancellations. Quite noticeably, though, the project cancellations mainly occurred in seats held by coalition members in regional areas.

The minister also locked in some regional rip-offs when she took away the 80-20 funding split. The Commonwealth used to pay 80 per cent and state governments 20 per cent for regional projects. Now it's all fifty-fifty, so we get less for regional areas as a direct result of this minister's decision coming out of her 90-day 200-day review.

On top of the cuts to regional transport projects, the government has failed—and this is quite extraordinary—to build a single project under its Growing Regions Program. Remember that program? It had $600 million to build projects for regional Australia. It took more than two years even to call for nominations, and now, after 2½ years, work hasn't started on a single project under the Growing Regions Program. The minister has had to pretend she's delivered something by inspecting and opening coalition funded regional projects. The hypocrisy of this minister is that she comes in here and she spouts three-word slogans from the focus groups and attacks the record of the previous government but then she sneaks out of here and she travels around Australia, taking credit for projects she had nothing to do with. During the sitting weeks, she's in here shouting, the warrior for Labor, at the dispatch box making these false claims about chaos and everything else she thinks went wrong during the coalition government, but then, when she gets over here, she's off travelling around Australia, cutting ribbons, unveiling plaques and issuing press releases taking credit.

You don't have to take my word for it; you just have to look at the minister's own press releases. This is one of my favourites:

Light at the end of the Coffs Harbour Bypass tunnel

In a major milestone for one of regional Australia's biggest infrastructure projects, the first phase of the multi-billion-dollar Coffs Harbour Bypass is complete.

Well done, Minister! The minister is quoted as saying:

"This is a major milestone for this nation-shaping project.

During consultation ahead of the project in 2016, the people of Coffs Harbour were very clear they wanted tunnels instead of cuttings and it is great to see progress in bringing that to fruition."

But in 2019 the minister was the shadow minister who failed back the project in the first place. The member for Cowper fought like a Trojan to get the work done. He doesn’t even get a mention in the press release.

But it gets better. I won't bore you with the roundabout in my electorate; that's a little bit too self-indulgent. I should go to the hypocrisy roll of dishonour, which is very long. This one is my favourite in all of Australia. This one is really good: the Cooroy to Curra section D on the Bruce Highway, colloquially known as the Gympie bypass. This one really takes chutzpah. This one really does take the cake. This project started under Warren Truss. It continued when I was minister—before I was sacked the first time! Then it continued under the member for Riverina. Throughout all this, the constant advocacy by the member for Wide Bay fighting for this project has been exemplary. What you see in this press release, though, is:

The Albanese and Queensland Government funded Gympie Bypass has opened to traffic, a significant improvement for residents with heavy vehicles no longer needing to travel through Gympie.

That's all true. There's a quote from the Prime Minister himself—

"This vital infrastructure project has been a long time coming for the locals and visitors who travel throughout the Gympie region"—

and one from the minister:

"The Gympie Bypass opening to traffic today is a monumental achievement by the Australian and Queensland governments."

But she didn't put any money into it. It was funded entirely by the previous coalition government.

There are more that I probably won't quite get to—no; I will. The minister opposite, the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories—this is a beauty too—is in WA. She has announced $800,000 for a childcare centre, and she says:

It's fantastic to … see local-led projects progressing, and to discuss the Shire of Moora's forward priorities—because when we work together, we get the best outcomes for our regional communities.

That was $800,000 for a childcare centre—fantastic!—under the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. The minister loved the program so much she voted to abolish it. It's gone. The entire $800,000 came from the previous government.

Regional Australians aren't easy to fool. They can smell the bulldust of those opposite from a mile away. In just a few months time, regional Australians will only need to ask themselves a few simple questions when it comes to judging this government: Am I better off under this Prime Minister? Is my family better off? Is Australia a safer and better place to live? Do I feel positive about the future of my community under the leadership of this Prime Minister? The answer to all those questions, I'm afraid, is going to be no, because the cost of everything is going up and we will be even worse off under a Labor-Greens government in the future. We have a government that is more focused on three-word slogans than it is on the future of the Australian public.

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