Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Trade Practices Amendment (National Access Regime) Bill 2005 finally follows on from the findings of the Productivity Commission Review of the national access regime. Its purpose is quite simple. It is to improve conditions that underpin investment in significant national infrastructure—that is, rail lines, gas pipelines, electricity, water infrastructure, ports and airports. It is about making sure that companies, organisations and owners of national infrastructure that have natural monopoly positions are not able to use those monopoly characteristics to deny access to others but also to ensure that they operate in a regulatory environment that is sufficiently known in advance and understood to make realistic investment decisions for the future.

Today is a good day to talk about infrastructure. In fact, so overdue is this debate that any day would be a good day to talk about it. Out there in the world, where people in business and families deal daily with the consequences of inaction in this place, there have been daily calls for the government to address our crumbling infrastructure. In the streets and lounge rooms of my electorate in Parramatta, people know that we have a problem in this country, that we as a nation are failing to invest in the foundations that underpin our growth in business and in our families. For most of them, they are not talking about gas pipelines or ports in the first instance, but the principles are the same. It is astonishing how accurately the general population reads the problem—that this country is failing to invest in the fundamentals that underpin good lives and good business. It is not only failing to repair and renew but also failing to respond to new opportunities and needs as they arise.

People tend to talk about the infrastructure problem in terms of their own lives, principally in terms of our ailing education infrastructure and our health infrastructure. They talk about water, roads and public transport. They talk about soft infrastructure, community networks, child care and aged care infrastructure and skills, and they talk about the processes—for example, the industrial relations infrastructure that delivers certainty and security. They certainly know about the word ‘infrastructure’ and there is very real concern out there at all levels of our community that we are failing to invest appropriately. There is a clear, undeniable need for this country to invest in the foundations on which businesses, individuals and families build their lives.

In this bill today we are talking about one type of infrastructure, and a subset of that. We are talking about the large national physical infrastructure—rail lines, gas pipelines, electricity et cetera. But it is interesting to me that, even when we talk about that kind of infrastructure at the moment, the word ‘crumbling’ quite often comes to mind and comes out of the mouths of people talking about it. It seems that in Australia at the moment the words ‘crumbling’ and ‘infrastructure’ go together. This morning, just to test my theory, I ‘Googled’ the words ‘crumbling infrastructure’ and found 11,700 Australian references. I even found a website where a competition was being run for the best slogan for a bumper sticker that spread the message that our decaying and crumbling infrastructure is in desperate need of investment, otherwise future generations will inherit infrastructure far worse than we had—

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