Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Ageing and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

The Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008 will see the creation of Infrastructure Australia, an advisory body created with the specific purpose of considering Australia’s infrastructure requirements. I rise to support this bill; however, I wish to put on the record my support for the technical amendments made by my colleague the member for Wide Bay. These amendments will ensure that the Infrastructure Australia body works more efficiently. Strong infrastructure is a key component of future growth in regional Australia and in my electorate of Parkes, in western New South Wales.

Infrastructure is possibly the link that binds together all the issues in my electorate. Possibly the most pressing infrastructure requirement in my electorate is roads. The previous government went a long way to addressing these problems with the Roads to Recovery program and the creation of AusLink, but there is still a large roads problem in my electorate. It is important to remember that nearly every item that finds its way onto a supermarket shelf in every town or city in Australia starts its journey on a local road. In my electorate people run multimillion-dollar businesses and as little as 10 millilitres of rain can mean that they cannot get their produce to market.

In the past, we have used vehicle movements to assess the funding for roads. Maybe there has been a political imperative to link communities together but, with local roads, quite often the value of the production of an area is not taken into account. In respect of agriculture, we are moving from large bulk products that have a long shelf life into horticulture and intensive agriculture. This makes it more imperative to get to market on time. In order to grow production and to move into these more intensive industries we need not only more efficient use of resources such as water but also a more reliable road network.

Quite often the most productive land has the worst base for road building, so we have the double problem of high production and a lack of suitable road base. This can be expensive, and it is a difficult situation to overcome. These roads also restrict people from finding suitable employees to operate in these areas. Understandably, it is a great disincentive to move to a place where you cannot get your children to school on a regular basis or you cannot access emergency health services when you require them. I would like to propose that as a parliament we look at the productivity of an area when we are assessing our funding needs, particularly in relation to local roads.

The other issue is rail. Rail is very much at the moment in the minds of people in my electorate and in regional Australia. The potential for a very large wheat crop is looming this year. We have had excellent rains right across north-west New South Wales and across the black soil country that my electorate is renowned for. It will take very few rainfall events to ensure a big crop. The proposed removal of services by Pacific National in the grain freight market is a worrying issue for the grain farmers in my area. If you add that to the issue of deregulation of the wheat market, which has been proposed by the new government, the uncertainty amongst wheat growers in my electorate is most intense.

The other issue is inland rail. I was quite distressed to hear the announcement just after the election that $65 million was being pulled from the scoping study on inland rail and that it is going to be delayed for a couple of years. Inland rail is a multifaceted piece of infrastructure. Its primary purpose would be to move freight in a 22- to 23-hour time frame from Melbourne to Brisbane and vice versa. In the areas that it would dissect—and it would go right through the middle of my electorate—the potential to grow industry would be enhanced quite a lot. Inland Australia has been looking for a major infrastructure project such as this not only for quick access to ports with produce but also as a major key in community building. My electorate covers some of the most progressive and productive towns in rural Australia, including towns such as Dubbo, Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and Mudgee. Those towns would all benefit from having a high-speed rail line going through the area. It would put my electorate at the crossroads of transport in regional Australia. As the country comes to grips with the effects of climate change, rail could play a major part. It is important to understand that one double-stack container train would take 176 B-double semitrailers off the roads and would save something like 4,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas per trip. We need to seriously take into account the effect that that would have.

Spending on water infrastructure is also important. The previous government’s National Water Initiative allocated $10 billion to water and 60 per cent of that was to be spent on improving infrastructure. I would urge the government to seriously look at that. Water is one of our great natural resources and we need to value every drop. I spoke about the potential for high-value horticultural crops and manufacturing. That goes hand in hand with the introduction of inland rail. We need to be very wary of how we use our water resources. It is a major concern that far too much water is being lost through seepage and evaporation in irrigation channels. Spending money on infrastructure here would be a practical measure and savings could be made straightaway. The reworking of some of our older irrigation systems and channels is a solid proposal and I think it should be looked at. Another major infrastructure project that would be of major benefit in the Murray Darling Basin is the reworking of the Menindee Lakes. A massive amount of water is lost now to evaporation and we should look at deepening and re-engineering the Menindee Lakes sooner rather than later.

The other infrastructure we need to look at is health. In regional and rural Australia some of our health infrastructure is reaching the end of its use-by date. In the largest centre in my electorate, Dubbo, the New South Wales government are really struggling to maintain their services through the Dubbo Base Hospital. Dubbo Base Hospital services a population of approximately 200,000 people; most of western New South Wales is serviced through the Dubbo Base Hospital. It basically needs to be pulled down and replaced. The New South Wales government would need to look at the health infrastructure right throughout my electorate and indeed regional Australia.

The other piece of health infrastructure that I can see as looming with great importance is that, with the changing face of health professionals in Australia and more and more younger, particularly female, doctors coming into the system now, the idea of a doctor buying a practice and staying there for 20 or 30 years seems to be a thing of the past. Out of interest, my daughter is at the moment a fifth-year medical student. Most of her friends are female and most of them will work in regional Australia. But they possibly will not have the ability to purchase a large medical centre.

Under the previous government, through the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund, in my local area the Gwydir Shire Council received a grant to go towards the construction of a walk-in, walk-out medical centre which at the moment is being built in the town of Warialda. This will provide facilities for doctors to work on a commission basis without having to outlay large sums of money to purchase the practice. Hopefully it will encourage more younger health professionals to come to regional areas without the financial burdens placed upon them. This would also provide opportunity for ancillary health services, such as speech pathology, physiotherapy, and even, hopefully, dentistry. As we look at the changing face of health in Australia, the government needs to be one step ahead and provide the infrastructure that is necessary.

Another very exciting proposal in my electorate is the health centre in Gunnedah. As late as earlier this week I wrote to Minister Roxon regarding this proposal. It is an idea that would be a partnership within the local community, through the council, the local state government managed health service, all the local general practitioners in the town, and the University of Newcastle. Not only would it provide a one-stop shopping town for general practitioners, specialists coming through on a revolving basis and ancillary health; it would also be a facility for Newcastle university to have a structured training program for their young health students coming through. One of the problems with training health professionals in regional Australia is that our GPs are overstretched at the moment with their workload and there is no structured mechanism for training these students. As we look at our overall infrastructure spend, our spend on health infrastructure is something that needs to be looked at.

The other one is energy. With the world approaching peak oil—if we have not already reached that point—and the soaring cost of petroleum, we need to spend money now on energy and alternative energy infrastructure. In my electorate there are some exciting possibilities. There is an indication that the gas fields in the Pilliga forest, west of Narrabri, will be a large resource, and I think it is very important that, as quickly as possible, we put in place the pipelines and infrastructure needed to spread that right across the country, for a number of reasons. For example, in my area in the town of Mudgee there is an abattoir now sitting idle that I am sure would reopen if it could get a supply of reliable, clean energy in the form of natural gas. It would provide not only a valuable outlet for cattle in my electorate but also a great boost to employment in the Mudgee area and help to build the population of that town. Another reason is to do with alternative fuels and the possibilities they bring, particularly ethanol: a reliable source of energy such as natural gas is vital to make the production of ethanol a viable alternative. As we run short of petroleum, we really are going to need to look at that issue.

Another source is solar energy. The area of north-west New South Wales has been identified as one of the most favourable places in Australia to put a solar power station. The daylight and sunlight hours are very suitable for that. It is also not in a remote location, so it can easily be hooked into the grid. I know that in the town of Moree, in the northern part of my electorate, the local council is looking at a proposal to install a solar power station to run in conjunction with a desalination plant—not for the specific reason of generating more drinking water but because tourism is a large part of the Moree shire. They rely heavily on the spa baths there, and the half-a-dozen or so commercial spa bath enterprises in the town are having an issue with disposal of their waste water. So the Moree community is looking at the very innovative approach of using solar power to desalinate this spa water and returning it to the system or selling it as potable water, as well as selling the mineral salts removed, a by-product of this process, to be used as stockfeed et cetera.

In conclusion, I believe that the future of this country does involve promoting growth in regional Australia, and expenditure on infrastructure is probably the single most positive thing that the government can do to promote that growth. That is why I am speaking in support of this bill, and I hope that the new Labor government will put infrastructure spending in regional Australia at the top of its list of priorities.

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