Senator Joyce said today that the recently announced successful projects under Round One of the Labor Government’s Regional Development Australia Fund, is nothing but an overwhelming pork-barrel.
As reported in the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun today, nearly 70 per cent of $199 million in regional grants have gone to seats held by Labor and independent MPs.[1] That is, despite the fact that Labor only hold one third of the seats in regional Australia.
However, it was only late last year that the Regional Development Minister Simon Crean, vowed to stamp-out pork-barrelling. He told the Australian in September last year that:
We've got to get away from pork-barrelling . . . this sense that you only hand out stuff around election time," Mr Crean said.
We've got to get away from this notion of just football grounds or sports stadiums or local halls to investing in communities, investing in our skills and our youth, our education." [2]
$10 million in the latest round went to the Geelong football stadium, $4.96 million Lismore City Hall upgrade and $1.67 million to a concert hall at Barragga Bay.
Just another example of Labor saying one thing and then doing another.
This morning, the world’s recently awarded Best Finance Minister, Wayne Swan, told Sky News that he “wouldn’t accept the validity of those figures for one second”.
The figures don’t lie Mr Swan; you have sent the money to your Labor and Independent colleagues despite what you call “a rigorous process”.
[1] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/mps-feather-their-nests-from-200m-rural-fund/story-fn7x8me2-1226142110970
[2] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/crean-vows-end-to-pork-barrel-for-the-regions/story-fn59niix-1225919841791