Scott Morrison coy on leaked Turnbull infrastructure plan

Scott Morrison has refused to confirm or deny a leak revealing Malcolm Turnbull approved a $7.6 billion infrastructure package.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull personally approved a $7.6 billion roads and rail package aimed at saving marginal seats across the country as part of his ­re-election blueprint, a leak has ­revealed. Picture: AP

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to confirm or deny a leak revealing his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull personally approved a $7.6 billion roads and rail package aimed at saving marginal seats across the country as part of his ­re-election blueprint, saying infrastructure commitments will become a reality when he announces them.

The Prime Minister said he would not confirm the existence of the package, which was one of 10 major projects fully funded and listed in the May federal budget under “decisions taken but not yet announced”, according to the ­Herald Sun.

“What I am going to say is what was in the budget, and that was $7.8bn for projects in Victoria,” the former treasurer said.

“Over the next ten years their share of infrastructure funding in Victoria, not including the East-West Link by the way, is around 27 per cent. The population is 25.7 (per cent of Australia’s total population).”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: AAP

Pressed again to confirm the leak, Mr Morrison said: “No I won’t.”

“If they think they’ve got a story, they can stack it up,” he said.

Asked whether the story was wrong, Mr Morrison said he would not deny it.

“No. What I will say is infrastructure commitments from my government will be made by me and they will be a reality when I announce them,” he said.

Pressed again on whether his response could be taken as confirmation of the leak, Mr Morrison said:

“Well no, I don’t think you can.”

“What I’m saying is the infrastructure commitments my government makes are decisions that I will take, and I’ve been in the job as you say for 11 days,” he said.

Among the major projects is $1.5 billion towards planning and pre-construction of high-speed rail along the east coast, with ­priority on linking Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Newcastle.

More than $3bn would also be poured into a host of western Sydney seats as part of a north-south rail link to create hundreds of jobs.

About $1.6bn would be poured into key Queensland electorates aimed at saving the seats of MPs including George Christensen, Luke Howarth, Michelle Landry and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton — the man who brought on the leadership challenge that ousted Mr Turnbull, reports the Herald Sun. Victoria will receive $150 million, earmarked for Liberal MP Sarah Henderson’s Geelong seat of Corangamite.

A senior Liberal source told the Herald Sun: “Others will no doubt claim this stuff as their own but Malcolm had already funded this stuff in the budget. We were doing it.

“These MPs knew very well this stuff was coming yet, and that it had been fully paid for, yet they were still agitating publicly about it,” the source said.

Labor infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese said the government had cut actual infrastructure investment from $8bn in the current financial year to $4.5bn per year across the forward estimates.

“The Parliamentary Budget Office has indicated that it expects that investment to fall from 0.4 per cent of GDP down to 0.2,” Mr Albanese said told Sky News.

“(That’s investment cut) in half over the coming decade. Therefore it’s not surprising that there will be further investment made.

“What’s surprising is the delay that is occurring and the politicisation of the infrastructure investment process.”

Labor spokesman for infrastructure, transport and cities Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP

Mr Albanese said the Morrison government wasn’t a government, but a rabble, and the leak had come from a document that would have gone through the cabinet and expenditure review committee process in the lead-up to the May budget.

“There are a range of projects in the list that had already been supported by federal Labor, so once again we’ve been leading from opposition, over projects like the Linkfield Road overpass, the Rockhampton bypass, the Mackay ring road stage two, western Sydney rail,” Mr Albanese said.

“The concern here is, why is it that these decisions were made in May, funding allocated, but nothing’s happened, because they wanted to just politicise the process, rather than, in the case of western Sydney rail, get on with creating the project, get on with jobs and economic activity, get on with creating the certainty.

“What we did, was we listened to Infrastructure Australia and we made sure that we had that infrastructure pipeline, so every single budget where I was the infrastructure minister we did have new projects for each and every state and territory.

“I mean there is nothing in this for Victoria in the form of transport. All there is is $150m for the Geelong city deal. I’ve been recently to both Geelong and Darwin who were promised city deals, who happily sat down with the local councils, with the state governments.

“These things have been announced more than a year ago, but not a dollar has flowed, so it’ll be interesting to see when the actual allocations were, because this government has also been very good at making announcements for new projects, but when you look at the detail, the funding comes sometime after Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, all of them have left the parliament.

“Funding doesn’t start for six or seven years, so we’ll wait and see what the detail of this is.”

With Staff Writers