Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

It is an absolute pleasure to be speaking today on this wonderful report from the Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services. The report is called The great freight task: is Australia’s transport network up to the challenge? You would have to conclude just from the title that the answer to that question is a resounding no. We are not up to the challenge as yet. But I am sure that if the government were to look closely at this report and take on the recommendations from our committee, then we would be well on our way to actually meeting this challenge in the future. It is an enormous challenge—all well documented in this very good quality report.

I would like to thank the members of the committee: the chair, Mr Paul Neville; the deputy chair, Mr Steve Gibbons; Sharon Bird; Barry Haase; Jill Hall; Dennis Jensen; Stewart McArthur; Kym Richardson; and Alby Schultz. I also thank the committee secretariat, who have done a wonderful job: Janet Holmes, Ian Dundas, Tas Luttrell, Samantha Mannette, Courtney Krouse, Jazmine De Roza and Marlene Dundas. I wanted to put their names on the record because they have worked very hard. It is a small but good thing to acknowledge the hard work they do. It is not just about the committee members; it is also about the committee secretariat, who do all the travelling and cobble together all the comments that we other people make in our deliberations and at our hearings.

This was an excellent report—in fact, it was an excellent inquiry—because it really does look at a contemporary challenge that we all face. There was a great spirit of bipartisanship in this report. This is a unanimous report of all the committee members, which is wonderful to see. It took on a very serious issue about the role of Australia’s regional arterial road and rail networks, the national freight transport task, the relationship between road and rail and their connectivity to ports and the policies required to make all that happen. I was very pleased to be part of what I think will be in future years a very significant document which outlines some very good recommendations.

This is a massive document for good reason; it is 350-odd pages long. There is a lot of work to be done and there was a lot of work done by the committee to ensure that we did cover off and check off on all of those things right across the country. I do not think we left a road unturned, a rail uninspected, a port unvisited or a recommendation brought by industry or by stakeholders unlooked at. So it is large for those reasons. The committee made 25 recommendations, all of which I think the government ought to closely examine and pay some attention to.

If I distil this report down to just a few a few themes, it might give people reading or listening to this statement some idea of what it is about. It is really about the federal government taking a real interest and playing a real role. I do not think there is any question about that. I do not say that in a political way; I am just saying that the federal government ought to take a real interest in all of the issues outlined here and, from that interest, play a role. This is also about the need for infrastructure being beyond that of a particular state, a particular council, a particular region or a particular port. The infrastructure need in this country is in the national interest and, therefore, should be approached from that perspective. This is not about pork-barrelling to give somebody an advantage in a particular seat. It is much bigger than that and ought to be treated that way.

This is also the story of the need for cooperation at the COAG level. I believe very strongly in this. What is recommended in here and what will make a difference in the infrastructure tasks in this country is cooperation at the COAG level. It is about including local governments and state governments. It is about federal government being involved at all three levels and including the private industry and other stakeholders. This must happen. It is also about the coordination of projects. Projects need to be coordinated in a holistic way, with the view that individual projects themselves impact on other projects, on other roads, on rail, on ports and on a whole range of interconnecting modal hubs.

Finally, it is about funding. I do not think there is any question that you cannot do all of the things I have just mentioned without committing dollars. There are dollars to be committed. In this report we stipulate a number of costs, but in the end those costs should be viewed as investments. They should be viewed as a benefit to the whole country and to whole regions, as jobs creators. This is not just about cost; it is about funding an investment. That is what all these recommendations are about.

I am quite pleased with the words that are contained in this report. It could have easily become a political document. It can be used in a political sense, but I do not think the document itself is political. The document is about infrastructure, roads and the freight task. It is about all those things that we all agree need to happen. The document can be used in any political way that people choose to make points about regions, about what is happening in particular areas and what has not been happening. For me this document is also about that.

I might go through a couple of the recommendations that I think are important. Recommendation 1 states:

The Committee recommends that the Minister for Transport and Regional Services require the Australian Transport Commission and the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics to undertake the establishment of a national transport database.

That is actually quite important. We cannot understand the full scope of a problem until we have had a good look at the problem, a bit of an audit. I say at this stage, in a political way, that Labor’s policy is to have a body called Infrastructure Australia, which would do what is recommended here in very much the same essence and spirit. I think that is part of the fix, part of the solution, and what we need in this country. I fully support that first recommendation and the following one, which backs it up.

There are some important notes about ports. The committee recommends that COAG undertake the establishment of an Australia-wide set of standards. Again, this is a good recommendation. I think most people reading this report would say that is just common sense. It is, and it ought to happen. There ought to be a great level of cooperation between governments to ensure that we can have a set of standards. My view has always been that, if you have six different standards, one of them will be better than the others and there will be one that will be at the bottom of that list that is not as good as the others. Therefore, we should draw a line up to the best standard and say: ‘This is where we can reach. This is where we should all aim.’ It is not about bringing anyone down to a standard; it is about bringing them up to a standard. I think that is very important.

There is a recommendation to set up a critical port infrastructure fund, which I agree with. I think we should go one step further and, through the Infrastructure Australia body, also set up an infrastructure fund to look at not only the critical task of what is in this report but at the much broader task of taking that funding, that directive, from being purely a discretionary fund, or a fund that comes about at election times, to being much more closely related to national interest and the needs there. There are a whole range of recommendations with that in mind.

In the area of rail, the report also looks at the particular techniques used in the Hunter Valley coal chain, which is an exemplary model. It recommends that we should look at those techniques much more closely and perhaps spin them off into other areas, which I think is a good recommendation. In the area of road infrastructure, the report recommends urgent consideration to assist state and local governments to fund upgrades of roads. I do not think anyone could argue with that seriously. We have come to the point in this country where we all need to look seriously at how we fund roads. When somebody drives on a road, they do not ask themselves, ‘Who funds this road?’; they just say, ‘This road needs fixing.’ Fixing the roads is what ought to happen, not disagreement about who is responsible for the funding. It should just happen.

There are a whole range of other recommendations that I think are good—about intermodal facilities; about 40-foot containers and what should be done there in terms of world trends and world’s-best standard; and about looking at the role of the three tiers of government, which I have already mentioned. I think that is critical to the quality of this report: it acknowledges that the three tiers of government must be involved. They need to have an equal partnership. I certainly understand the difference between the capacity of a local authority, the capacity of a state government and the capacity of the federal government to pay for something. But just imagine if all three got together in agreement, with cooperation, and actually looked at fixing some problems in the national interest. We would have a very different economy in this country, one that would leap ahead from where it is today. Finally, the report looks at some intelligent tracking technology and at cross-border issues. I have always had the view that responsibility does not end at an arbitrary line on a map, be it a state line or a local boundary line. We need cooperation; we need all three levels of government. I recommend this report. (Time expired)

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