Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. While I do not oppose the bill, I am a bit concerned about the involvement of state governments who have a history, particularly in my state of New South Wales, of gross mismanagement of most infrastructure projects. It does not matter whether it is road or rail—although the gross mismanagement in rail is that they shut it down. I suppose that is infrastructure building at its best—when you look around and say: ‘Okay, what savings can I make so that I can pour my money into a city area, into a cross-city tunnel or into some major infrastructure thing that has gone wrong in the city? I think I’ll cut something from the country.’ That has typically been the attitude of the New South Wales government.

I am here to raise the issue of Infrastructure Australia and its involvement with the states. I understand that Infrastructure Australia will reside in the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. It is regional development that I want to discuss. Most people would think that the discussion around this bill would be primarily centred on roads and associated heavy vehicle industry, rail or Auslink proposals—all of those kinds of issues. But I would like to draw the House’s attention to a few issues that I am having great difficulty with. It is not the first time, and it definitely will not be the last time, that you hear me rise in the parliament to raise this issue. I cite an opinion piece in my local paper, the Daily Advertiser, from 12 March 2008. The opinion piece says that the health sector needs new direction, and it is quite right. The Daily Advertiser and the community of Wagga Wagga have been absolutely scathing of state governments—I have to say, both coalition and Labor—which have been grossly neglectful of them and have been unable to provide Wagga Wagga with a base hospital. This has been going on for years—in fact, 30 years of promises made and promises broken by every form of government. We are still in the same situation. We do need a new direction. We must have a new direction in health.

The opinion piece talks about discussions that I had with the previous Minister for Health and Ageing. I approached him many times about making the Riverina a pilot project whereby the Commonwealth would take over the delivery of health to see exactly how it could run it in its entirety. I would really urge the current Minister for Health and Ageing to consider a pilot project, most appropriately in the Riverina, so that we could finally get some action on the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital. At this hospital not only are men and women sharing bathrooms but sinks are falling off walls, physicians are unable to attend, surgeons are unable to operate and operating theatres are being shut down because water is pumping through the roof and filling them up with water—near electrical equipment—so all surgery is postponed. It is a saga of sagas; it just goes on and on. And now we find that white ants are eating the kids ward out entirely. This was revealed in the Daily Advertiser on 11 March. I thought I could never be shocked by what is happening in the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital—that there could not be any more said about the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital that has not already been identified. But sadly there is. Sadly, staff discovered the white ants eating away the window frames of the children’s ward. The article in the Daily Advertiser quotes parents and doctors saying that the infestation is just one indication of the ward’s poor condition.

The paediatrician who has worked in the children’s ward is quoted as saying that the ward had been in a progressively poor state for years, that the biggest issue was cross-infection, that the ward was not safe from infection, that 12 children were being actively treated for cancer in this ward, that the treatment suppressed their immunity and that with poor cross-infection control they are most certainly at risk. The doctor went on to say that out of the 10 standards of the national health department the ward failed eight of them. They only had two inadequate isolation rooms, where contagious children were separated by only a curtain, and the ward was also often overcrowded and crammed, with few facilities for parents to stay the night with their dreadfully sick children. It is a disgrace. It is an infrastructure nightmare that should have been addressed by the state government over the years. I admit that I took it to the former Minister for Health and Ageing when the Commonwealth intervened on the Mersey Hospital. I thought that that opened up my case, allowing me to go to the minister to intervene in the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital. It is atrocious. Stories of the atrocious conditions that the staff—fabulous staff—are forced to work in are in the paper day after day.

I will be raising the issue of infrastructure with respect to the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital on a consistent basis because I believe that the Minister for Health would like to resolve this ongoing issue and I am hopeful that she can use her power to step in. She has already indicated that the reason that it would be better to have a Labor federal government is that the blame game would be stopped between the states and the Commonwealth and the enormous health problem that exists, particularly in New South Wales, would be more easily resolved by having the Labor Party at Commonwealth and state levels. I agree with her. I think that she has the tools and the ability. She is a very competent minister and I believe wholeheartedly that if she really puts her mind to it, she will be able to resolve this ongoing issue for the Riverina people. It is the only regional referral hospital. All the other hospitals were shut down as base hospitals. There is only one base hospital for referral. The difference is that at Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, a two-bed ward was made into a four-bed ward and a four-bed ward was made into an eight-bed ward. No additional staff, services or facilities were installed. It is an absolutely disgusting disgrace and staff should not have to work in that area.

Communications infrastructure in my electorate is another major topic. It has been an ongoing issue for so long. I was surprised to see, with these major plans for the rollout of broadband, that we are going to raid the rural infrastructure fund—the money put away to ensure that rural telecommunications and communications were always kept up to speed. The interest earned from the Future Fund was to be used to ensure rural and regional people would have access to services and communications capacity, which of course they are entitled to. However, I see in the paper—and that is generally how I find things out now:

The federal government will not award a tender to build its planned national high-speed broadband network until September at the earliest, several months later than it hoped.

I am quoting from the Daily Advertiser of 12 March 2008. There is an obvious problem. The minister ‘had hoped to award the tender in June to build the $8 billion fibre-to-the-node network’. We all know that $8 billion for fibre to the node means fibre to the node in the city, and fibre to the node to houses in rural and regional Australia is not included in that money. Not only has it not been taking place; it is going to be put off for quite a while yet. That is sad because rural and regional people require access to reliable, adequate, fast and significant broadband services. Along with the Deputy Speaker, the member for Maranoa, I have always been pushing the barrow for rural and regional communications.

I come to a concern that I have in West Wyalong, which is in the Bland shire in my electorate. Again we have this combination of states and Commonwealth. Within Infrastructure Australia the states are going to have a fairly significant role in this. The Bland shire has a major problem; it is almost unthinkable. I wrote to the minister on 4 December about an issue of road classification confronting the Bland shire, after having had it brought to my attention on that day. I first congratulated the minister, as he should be congratulated, of course. I am sure that he will do a great job in resolving many of these state infrastructure problems, particularly through the Infrastructure Australia Bill. I explained to the minister that the Newell Highway runs through the main street of West Wyalong like a very narrow snake and that it is unsuitable for B-double truck movements. Bland Shire Council established a bypass for heavy vehicles to take B-doubles out of the CBD and an appropriate local road was gazetted as the B-double route.

There is a bit of a problem with this. Council have found that there are two major concerns with the bypass road. Firstly, there is a cost involved in maintaining a road to B-double standards. I note that local government is also involved in the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, in which Infrastructure Australia will sit. We have cost shifted onto local government. Bland Shire Council have not been able to upgrade the road so that B-doubles are out of the CBD, and they have found it very difficult to get the attention of the state government. They sought to reclassify the five-kilometre route as a regional road, which would be funded by the New South Wales RTA. As yet, council have not had any results from the road reclassification panel.

Secondly—and we think more importantly—there was an AusLink application. It was rejected because the Newell Highway has been classified as a higher mass limit route. The local roads are not rated to carry the increased loads that are now permitted on heavy vehicle combinations without permits applicable to specific companies on specific routes. In West Wyalong, the council are now presented with the anomaly of the Newell Highway heavy vehicle bypass forcing the trucks with a high mass limit accreditation onto a local road, and now they get fined for being on the local road. They are having a major difficulty there.

It is a two-tiered issue. One issue is that they desperately need funding to upgrade their bypass in order that it can meet the higher mass limit route, and obviously they need an expeditious reclassification of the road from local to regional status as well. That would enable funds for upgrading to come from a state allocation. Yet, when I brought this to the minister’s attention, he clearly said, ‘As you would be aware, the New South Wales government, through the Roads and Traffic Authority and local government, is responsible for the operation and the management of New South Wales regional roads.’ I am aware of that, and of course the minister is right.

But, if Infrastructure Australia is to genuinely work for all people of Australia, including rural and regional people, and it sits within the minister’s portfolio—and Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is a fairly large portfolio—and if the members of the panel must have expertise, one in local government, I am hopeful that surely the minister will see that common sense prevails on the establishment of Infrastructure Australia. In establishing this body, surely the minister can ensure that common sense prevails over this ridiculous situation that Bland Shire Council find themselves in. They are neither here nor there. They have an anomaly, with a road designed to get the vehicles out, where the vehicles can now be fined because it is not a higher mass limits road. They desperately need a road reclassification. I am hopeful that the minister can help us out with that.

Again I see some of the issues relating to the trucking industry when we look at the imposition that we now have on working truck owners and operators and their families. They have a whole new position where registration fees can in some cases go up 227 per cent. As from 2009, I think there is an additional levy of 1.37c a litre—I might be wrong on that figure; it is off the top of my head. Already the industry has been buckling under high fuel prices. It has not passed them on as much as it should and could have to the consumer. At the same time, we have the ACCC inquiry going on into the high cost of groceries and food, and then we impose a tax on the largest carrier. Yet there is no doubt that, whether we like it or not, rail is never going to be able to replace all of the road freight, nor should it. Of course, grocery prices will have to rise as the new tax increases on truckies are passed on to consumers. There is no choice.

So I do not understand how we can be holding an enquiry that is asking questions about why things are so expensive in the grocery and retail sector while we are imposing another set of conditions that the Liberal government fought the states on and won. We fought and won against the states. The states wanted to impose this before and we fought against it. To his credit, Warren Truss, who was then the minister, was able to defeat it so that the cost would not get passed on to the consumer and so that the road transport operators would have a fair go—because without them the future for Australia and Australian consumers is incredibly bleak.

So I raise these issues for your attention. They are just a few of many issues that will come to the fore over a period of time, and I really do look forward to the success of this new unit in delivering greater benefits and greater accountability from the states.

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