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He argued that the programs Albanese had deemed pork-barrels were needed to “offset the fact that when Labor governments get in,we get nothing”.
“I fear all we’ll see in this budget is a slash and burn operational funding,” Littleproud said.
He said the government’s new emissions reduction target would force a costly clean energy transformation on major regional industries including fossil fuels and manufacturing,so the federal government must replace the economic losses created by its policies.
“If the government makes legislative and arbitrary targets,then they need to explain to Australians how they’re going to do it,and who pays for it?” he said.
“If there is a burden that regional Australians bear as a result of it,then how do we support and adjust their economies?”
Labor went to the election promising to axe some government programs,including the $500 million regionalisation fund,and to scrap the remaining $410 million funding for the Community Development Grants program.
Other expensive promises made by the Coalition,such as a $5 billion extension of the Melbourne to Brisbane inland rail line to Gladstone,and elements of the $2 billion “regional accelerator program” are likely to be ditched or sharply reduced.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said these programs had been specifically set up to help regions with the challenges of moving towards net zero emissions,and should be kept on the table.
“Not everything has to be thrown out just because you’ve had a change of government,” she said.
“I completely reject any notion that spending money in rural and regional communities – not just for their own benefit but for the broader benefit of Australia – is a waste.”
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Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce,who struck an almost $30 billion deal to support the Coalition’s target of net zero by 2050,rejected Albanese’s accusation and said these projects would prove necessary.
“Everything that is initially apparently a pork-barrel turns into a vital thing,” he said.
“If[Albanese] thinks the Darwin to Townsville bitumen road is pork-barrelling,then its pork barrelling a Labor electorate[Lingari].”