The federal injection of funds into the re-election campaign of Australia's longest-serving political leader, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, is an example of Labor's disconnect with regional Australia, one regionally based MP told Flow just prior to the October budget.
Liberal member for Wannon Dan Tehan expressed disappointment at the axing of the Building Better Regions Fund alongside a $2.2 billion federal intervention into the Suburban Rail Loop 'Daniel Andrews pet project' controversy in Melbourne:
"They have now committed to a $75 billion spend - the Suburban Rail Loop will cost $150 billion - meanwhile regional and rural Australia and the road infrastructure network has been smashed by the wet weather, the storms and the flooding - zilch for that, which has faced underfunding by the state government."
Listen to the full interview on the Flow podcast player below:
Mr Tehan defended the axed Building Better Regions Fund which Labor claimed had been rorted by the former Coalition government, particularly the National Party:
"All the time effort and cost those community groups put into those applications were all for naught. There won't be as much money as there was in the $250 million. There was no rorting - these were just very good community projects, everyone who's seen them in the electorate of Wannon they were much needed projects - to call it rorting shows they have no idea about rural and regional Australia."
The shadow immigration minister and former trade minister expressed dismay
"It's a great shame - we miss out on cuts to tariffs which make it cheaper for us to sell our goods into India and UK markets. Once again, we call on the Albanese Labor government to actually focus on the things that matter to the Australian people like these free trade agreements. Get them through the parliament so our farmers can benefit from them. If they don't get through this year, that's 12 months of tariff cuts our farmers miss out on."
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