The much maligned Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility would be axed and replaced with a new fund focused on pipelines to link gas fields across Queensland and the Northern Territory, if Labor wins the May 18 election.
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Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said last week Labor would end the infrastructure fund that was created by the Abbott government with a mandate to sink $5 billion into projects across the northern reaches of Australia.
KAP leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter said the NAIF would be no loss and blamed the LNP for failing to deliver infrastructure to the north spending just $15.8 million from the $5 billion kitty.
"The National Party should be ashamed of themselves, they had (the NAIF) for six years and it gave nothing to the people of Australia," Mr Katter said.
"The shut down of the NAIF is tragically no loss and the National Party have done this country a huge disservice. They sat on $5 billion for six years and there was not a single significant project undertaken in the north."
Under Labor's plan the NAIF would be replaced by a development fund to work with private financiers and investors to deliver major projects across Queensland, the NT and WA.
"Labor's Northern Australia Development Fund will provide a financing facility and work with Infrastructure Australia to identify and support projects of national economic significance, such as gas pipelines, in Australia's north," Mr Shorten said.
Labor will set aside up to $1.5 billion for proposed pipelines across Queensland's Galilee and Bowen basins while another line connecting the Beetaloo basin to Darwin and across to the east coast.
Mr Shorten said opening the Beetaloo basin could help turn Darwin into a "manufacturing powerhouse" with the area holding enough gas to supply the domestic market for up to 400 years.
The new fund would also sink $1 billion into tourism projects across northern Australia.
Mr Katter said the ALP's promise to divert the money into a new fund could only do better than the NAIF.
"We had shovel ready projects, silver platter and all, hand delivered and ready to reverse their notorious reputation for being inept, and still got nothing," he said.
"We can only pray that whatever comes out of the other blokes does better than the last lot. But I ain't holdin' my breath."
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
