Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Ferguson, the Murray-Darling is not like a pipe from a tank to a tap. If you put water in there it will not necessarily come out somewhere else. That is the simple fact. I commend Senator Wong for the work that she has been doing in order to deal with the very difficult circumstances faced in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Let us go to the question now of the Regional Partnerships and the Sustainable Regions programs. According to the ANAO report, seven days before the 2007 election caretaker period began, the previous government approved 32 projects and 28 of those were in coalition electorates. Before the 2004 election, in 51 minutes Parliamentary Secretary De-Anne Kelly spent $3.3 million approving 16 projects. I quote from the ANAO report that was released in November 2007:

... the manner in which the Programme had been administered over the three year period to 30 June 2006 examined by ANAO has fallen short of an acceptable standard of public administration ...

That is a damning comment from the ANAO, and those opposite know it.

In my area of North Queensland we had a particularly difficult program. It was a Sustainable Regions Program which was a commitment from John Anderson, when he was the minister, in recognition of the difficulties in structural adjustment that were occurring, particularly in the tobacco industry but also in other industries on the tablelands. Seventeen and a half million dollars was allocated to the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns in order to invest in diversification, building the economy and getting the tablelands back on track.

I have never seen such a debacle. It was the work that the people on the tablelands did in bringing to our attention the appalling lack of accountability that was occurring up there that allowed some scrutiny to be placed on this particular program. Nearly $18 million was allocated. It was really only in the last two rounds of allocations that I think there was good investment in job creation, in true economic development.

Early in the piece, half a million dollars was allocated to the Mareeba wildlife park. You have to ask what sort of due diligence was done in order to allocate half a million dollars. It was six weeks after that money was allocated that the park went into receivership. We had African animals not being able to be fed. It was support by people from Kuranda, Mareeba and other Atherton Tableland communities and even from Cairns that kept those animals alive. What sort of due diligence gives half a million dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money to a company that goes into receivership six weeks later? I am pleased to report to the Senate that the park has now reopened, and I commend those who did that work. But, to be frank, it put the whole operation under a very big cloud for a very long period of time.

Funding of $1.2 million was allocated to a company called A2 Milk. This is a company that had as one of its advisers a gentleman who subsequently went to work for the parliamentary secretary. You have to wonder where the conflicts of interest occurred in such an incredibly bizarre relationship between the company and the parliamentary secretary’s office. It was in fact a ghost project. It had no basis in fact. There was no project to give the money to, but money was in fact allocated. The government’s own local advisory committee advised against the allocation of funds. They warned about the state of the project’s finances but they were ignored.

I could go through a range of inappropriate funding that was given to the Atherton Tablelands. I have to remind the Senate that quite a substantial amount of money was given to a hotel on the main street of Atherton, a hotel that had dubious events, in my view, occurring on Friday nights, with people serving alcohol in various states of undress. But quite an amount of money was given to this particular hotel in order to build a convention centre when we and the other hoteliers knew that there was simply not the room on that site to build a convention centre of any reasonable sort. That money was given and the owner of that hotel has built an extension. If you would like to call it a convention centre you can, but I wonder if the ACCC would look at you for false and misleading advertising.

But let us finish on a positive note. Can I commend the work that has happened in the nine short months that this government has been on the benches. The Prime Minister announced today that the Australian government will provide $95 million towards the construction of the Townsville port access road. The Townsville port access road is real infrastructure that will truly help the mining community but particularly the beef industry by filling in the missing link between the main highway and the Townsville port. It is something that we have been calling for for many years. I have to say, it was on the urging of the then shadow minister for roads in the 2004 election campaign that we actually got it onto the agenda, and now we are going to do it. (Time expired)