Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the government’s Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, a bill which will establish a statutory authority known as Infrastructure Australia. While I do not oppose all the points in the bill, I call on the Australian government to do several things: firstly, to lift restrictions upon Infrastructure Australia undertaking a review of its own volition; secondly, to ensure that the minister’s power to give new functions to Infrastructure Australia are subject to primary disallowance; and, thirdly, to ensure that the minister seeks advice from Infrastructure Australia before appointing the Infrastructure Coordinator.

The coalition government, through strong economic management, were able to invest in the upgrading of Australia’s infrastructure. The coalition reformed previous ad hoc approaches put in place by the then Labor government and developed the AusLink program—a program which invested a total of $38 billion over a 10-year period; a program which identified corridors of national importance and developed long-term plans; a program which included Roads to Recovery, which funded over 25,000 local council roads and benefited my electorate and every other electorate in the country. We also reintroduced the Black Spot Program, which had been axed by the previous Labor government—a program which aims at improving road safety and, on average, upgrades 300 black spots on our roads each year. These have been extremely successful programs.

The question I put is: why does the government feel the need to create another bureaucratic layer when the current programs are successful and deliver positive outcomes? Why add another layer of red tape and bureaucracy? The cost to the taxpayer of this layer of bureaucracy will be $20 million over four years. We already have the Council of Australian Governments and the reports they have committed to providing every five years. I note the first of those reports should already be sitting on the minister’s desk. Why do we need another level of bureaucracy when we have AusLink under the reporting mechanism through COAG? Given that these reports provide information on rail, roads, airports, seaports, energy and water for each state, why does the Labor government need to create a new layer? Does it simply not trust the information it has from its own state Labor governments?

I have seven roads in my electorate which urgently need upgrading. These roads were identified by the Hawkesbury City Council and local residents in my community. Unlike the Rudd Labor government, the then coalition government did not need a statutory authority, at a cost of $20 million, to advise them that these roads needed upgrading. I would like to draw the attention of the House and the government to the following roads in my electorate that need upgrading. The roads include Freemans Reach Road, which carries approximately 5,500 vehicles per day and needs to be rehabilitated at a cost of $305,000. Comleroy Road, at Kurrajong, needs a portion of its road shoulder resealed at a cost of $585,000. Three kilometres of work needs to be done between Old Bells Line of Road and East Kurrajong Road. Terrace Road, North Richmond, needs to have a portion of its road shoulder sealed at a cost of $741,000. The 3.7 kilometres of work would start from the end of the factories at North Richmond and end at Wire Lane.

There is Grose Vale Road, from North Richmond to Grose Vale, a portion of which needs to be resealed at a cost of $995,000. The 5.1 kilometre roadworks would start at the entrance of the Sydney Water depot in North Richmond and would finish at Grose Wold Road. Scheyville Road, Oakville, needs a portion of the road sealed at a cost of $836,500 to provide adequate carriageway width. This particular roadwork would start at Old Stock Route Road and finish 4.29 kilometres down the road at Dunns Road. Old East Kurrajong Road over Howes Creek needs the approach road sealed by the construction of multicell box culverts at a cost of $425,000. This would provide flood-free access based on a one in 20 year flood occurrence. Finally, Old Stock Route Road, Brennans Dam Road and Commercial Road, Vineyard, need construction, again, of multicell box culverts and adjacent roadworks at a cost of $975,900. This project would, again, provide flood-free access based on a one in 20 year flood occurrence. The total cost for the upgrade of these roads in my community is approximately $5 million. I would like to point out that the then coalition government, late last year, acknowledged these roads and committed to upgrading them. I call on the Australian government to honour this commitment and demonstrate their care and concern for the people of Greenway by funding these roads.

I would like to advise the House that today I received communication from my local Rural Fire Service advising that another road needs urgent attention: the intersection of Boundary Road and Old Pitt Town Road, which was, tragically, the site of a major vehicle accident only 11 days ago which resulted in the loss of a life. Last week there was another accident at the same intersection, involving a mother and her daughter. Fortunately, they are okay. This is, again, another road in my electorate which needs a safety upgrade, and I am calling on the Australian government to commit to funding these urgent needs.

The response to Infrastructure Australia has been mixed, and concerns have been raised regarding how Infrastructure Australia will perform the functions it has been allocated. I am concerned about the lack of transparency. The minister will be able to give direction to Infrastructure Australia without being accountable directly to the parliament. What we will have is an annual report, and within that, again, there will be no transparency or accountability to the parliament.

A report by the Australian Infrastructure Report Card Alliance in 2001—the group is a major infrastructure stakeholder which prepares a report on infrastructure adequacy—gave rankings of: (a) very good, (b) good, (c) adequate, (d) poor and (e) inadequate. In this report, it is noteworthy that the areas where the Commonwealth had full or partial responsibility—namely, airports, telecommunications and national roads—ranked relatively highly but areas of state government and, to a lesser extent, local government responsibility were most in need of remediation. I think that while this bill focuses on another layer of bureaucracy it may fail to look at certain inadequacies of the state Labor governments and their management of infrastructure, particularly where they have been responsible.

We will see the Rudd Labor government, over this term, talk about the delivery of infrastructure, but I would like to remind the House that this is, indeed, possible because the coalition government, having managed the economy so well, has placed in the hands of the new government a significant surplus, which will reach an estimated $20 billion, and has also put in place restructuring and reform in the form of AusLink, which has provided funding infrastructure up until 2013-14. I recommend and encourage strongly that the Australian government look at the three points that I initially made in speaking to the House today—that is, again, to lift the restrictions upon Infrastructure Australia to undertake reviews of its own volition, to ensure that the minister’s power to give new functions to Infrastructure Australia is subject to primary disallowance and to ensure that the minister seeks advice from Infrastructure Australia before appointing the Infrastructure Coordinator.

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