Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, $21 billion in federal budget funding was dedicated for regional Australia, and it is now under serious threat from Labor's budget cuts. Prior to the election, the Nationals secured this $21 billion in new funding for community facilities, health care, water infrastructure, roads and highways, and education and training, securing tens of thousands of regional jobs. But now, when Labor needs to pay for its excessive promises, the first place they look is to the regions to rip money out under the guise of saying it is wasteful spending. The regions are not wasteful.

We have seen this playbook before, with Prime Minister Albanese having already developed a proven formula for cutting funding from regional Australia. The first thing they do is claim the coalition is rorting projects to favour regional communities. Well, regional funding should go to regional communities. Then they introduce Labor's own program to pay for their pre-election pork-barrelling of key marginal Labor seats while claiming new rules will be introduced. And then, when they have been in government for a year or two, they ignore the rules altogether.

In fact, when he was infrastructure minister in the Rudd government, Mr Albanese cut funding to vital projects in communities in coalition held seats, claiming the funding was nothing but pork-barrelling. He then replaced the program with a Labor program called the Better Regions program, which saw 90 per cent of its regional funding spent on Labor seats. Fast forward to 2010 and a damning ANAO report found that then infrastructure minister Albanese had failed his own guidelines in dishing out $550 million via the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. As was reported at the time, the ANAO found that projects in coalition held seats were twice as likely to miss out on funding. Only 18 per cent of applications for funding in coalition held seats were approved, compared to 42 per cent of applications for funding in ALP held electorates. In safe coalition seats, that rate was just over 10 per cent.

At the time, Tom Dusevic, the national chief reporter for The Australian, wrote:

Anthony Albanese has the gap-toothed charm of a shire president, a hands-on approach and a God-given talent for reading an electoral map.

The Auditor-General's report on the $550 million strategic projects part of the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, released yesterday, provides overwhelming proof that Labor has lost its virginity, and so has "Albo", in the time-honoured art of pork-barrelling.

But when the coalition made sure regional funding goes to regional areas, we were accused of pork-barrelling—but we say it's delivering.

By 2012 the Auditor-General was reporting details of over 33 cases over a two-year period in which Labor ministers, including the now Prime Minister, violated their own anti-pork-barrelling rules. Mr Albanese, when he was transport minister, approved three Roads to Recovery grants in his own inner-city electorate of Grayndler without notifying the finance minister as was required. The then environment minister, Tony Burke, failed to report an almost $500,000 Landcare grant in his inner-Sydney electorate of Watson. We've heard from those opposite time and time again that they are pure. Yet, as the Financial Review reported earlier this year, Labor was facing accusations of hypocrisy after making an estimated $750 million in grant promises to their marginal seats, despite years of attacking the coalition for doing so. I call on this government to ensure that the $21 billion in regional funding goes to the regions.