Page 4320 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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The money has been allocated under the Regional Development Australia Program.
On any measure, this election commitment, made days before the election, can hardly constitute a commitment by the current federal government. It was part of an ACT federal Labor election launch—nothing more. So how Dr Bourke can possibly claim, as he does in part (d) of this motion, that the money was “budget funded” is somewhat fanciful. How could it have been budget funded?
Paragraph (e) of this motion says:
… the incoming Commonwealth Government has said that it will not honour Regional Development Fund commitments made by the former Government …
Surely Dr Bourke is not seriously suggesting that every whimsical pork-barrel exercise that formed part of the federal Labor election panic attack should now be accepted and honoured by the current government. Surely Dr Bourke is not suggesting that. And if he is seriously suggesting that this pre-election thought bubble should be treated differently, let me highlight that this thought bubble is not an isolated case.
The new Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, said this in a statement in late October:
LABOR has promised hundreds of communities across the country money for local projects based on funding from a mining tax that failed to deliver the promised revenue …
For many communities Labor’s Regional Development Australia Fund and Regional Infrastructure Fund have been another cruel con. Right up to election day, Labor was announcing projects using money it knew did not exist.
It is astonishing that, even now, Labor continues to spruik its hollow projects when, in government, it failed to fund them. Hundreds of projects were announced that had not even received cursory departmental assessments, yet Labor was promising anyone who would listen that these were somehow a done deal.
The Coalition Government will, of course, honour signed contracts undertaken by the previous government. However, non-contracted announcements made by the Labor government have the status of election promises and do not bind an alternative government.
Labor was unable to deliver RDAF and RIF projects it already had on its books because those projects depended on a mining tax that, as we all now know, raised virtually no money.”
As the minister said, signed contracts will be honoured. So if the UC sports commons is not being funded, it is because there was no agreement and there was no commitment; there was just a quick headline for local consumption. Might I suggest that this is a well-used and well-worn tactic of Labor governments, local and federal,
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