Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you gave me hundreds of millions of dollars to go out and complete a five-year project, you'd expect me to keep you updated on it regularly. After all, it's your money. That's the expectation we have when governments spend taxpayers' money. With the Albanese government being big on transparency, you'd think that would be the case. There used to be an annual report published about the Launceston City Deal. It would tell you about all the projects that are currently happening and where they're up to.

Since Labor came into government, we haven't seen any reports about the Launceston City Deal, so I asked where they were. I had to ask a few times before I got an answer, though. It turns out there weren't any. Labor decided to stop publishing the reports when they came into government. When was that publicised? It's a complete lack of basic transparency—something that even the Morrison government was able to uphold. How can the people of Launceston be confident that the Albanese government is delivering on the remaining projects. They're the ones paying the price for this cloak-and-dagger approach. The Launceston City Council had to shell out an additional $6 million because the Albert Hall redevelopment went over time and the budget blew out. They promised $20 million for the northern Launceston cadet facility, and that could be lost because bureaucrats have gone around in circles arguing for years.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There have been some great projects delivered under the Launceston City Deal, but there are some projects which we have no clue about in terms of where they're at, and we don't know when the community can expect them to be completed. With this latest revelation about no reports and no transparency, it seems like the Albanese Labor government is determined to make sure we don't find out.