Joyce rejects Albanese’s pork-barrelling accusation

The Nationals fear Labor will slash regional funding after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused their party of being obsessed with pork-barrelling and looking after their mates.

Nationals leader David Littleproud accused the government of hiding behind a cheap political line instead of being constructive as it targeted funding for roads, rail and dams in the hunt for budget savings.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused the Nationals of being “obsessed” with pork-barrelling.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The Sydney Morning Herald revealed this week that tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure promised by the former government could be under threat in the next two budgets.

Also on the chopping block are regional-focused programs from the deal to secure the Nationals’ support for the net-zero by 2050 target.

The government’s expenditure review committee met in Canberra on Wednesday as senior cabinet ministers seek cuts ahead of the October 25 budget.

Albanese said the National Party were “committed to pork-barrelling”.

“We will fund projects, including in regional Australia, that stack up, that represent good investment for taxpayers,” he said at a press conference in Sydney on Wednesday morning.

“The Nats were obsessed with looking after their mates, sometimes looking after private interests, and it’s not a model for any government to follow.”

Littleproud said whenever Labor formed government, the “pendulum” on funding allocation swung away from regional communities.

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.”

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].”

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