Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. I have been talking for many years about the vital importance of infrastructure, not just to the former members of my union, the Australian Workers Union, who built this infrastructure in so many parts of Australia, including regional and remote Australia, but also to business leaders and financiers involved in infrastructure projects. In my previous role I was involved in the EastLink project in Victoria, the largest road infrastructure in Australian history. It is worth $3.2 billion and I am pleased to say it is well ahead of schedule. I was involved in negotiating the industrial relations employment structure of the project. There has been enhanced productivity, with great wages and profitability for all concerned. As a result, this project will actually be delivered ahead of time, with, for a project of its size, an almost unprecedented safety record and a great degree of industrial harmony—all done pre Work Choices.

We all recognise that infrastructure is essential for economic growth. I do not believe that, in Australia, financial capability is a problem. There is no shortage of money. Yet in too many areas in Australia we see there are backlogs and we see that state governments have been left to fix up a lot of the problems caused due to the absence of leadership by the previous federal government. To put it bluntly, we have had any number of years of growth, largely on the back of the commodities boom, but we have wasted a massive opportunity to put the building blocks in place for the next 15 years. It should never be forgotten that, if you look at the estimates from 2002-03 forward to 2010-11, the extra money which the federal government was projected to have was to come to $457 billion. Yet, when we look around at the infrastructure bottlenecks, we look at the armada of bulk commodity carriers blockading Australia’s coal and commodity ports, we see massive neglect. In fact, $435 billion of that $457 billion was given away by the previous federal government.

It is time for a more strategic and long-term approach. We have shied away from a strategy for the development of Australia. We see blockages in how we fund projects. We have disputes and regulatory uncertainty which have to be dealt with. We often have a disconnect between what a regulator will view as a fair return, and on what cost basis, and what returns we need to give investors the incentive to invest in projects. Certainly the pricing of infrastructure in Australia is complex, but fortunately we have this bill, which will start the process of providing certainty for investors and Australians generally.

We need an overhaul of our federal-state relations, helping to define each level’s responsibilities. This proposed legislation, in conjunction with the new government’s approach on federal-state relations, will help to at least put some real teeth into the development of Australia’s infrastructure. The public want quick fixes, and that is understandable. Quite often we see that local activists can be more powerful than perhaps the large strategic direction. Without the sort of legislation we see in front of us, we face the risk that Australian investment money will go overseas to where the return is and where the opportunity is. In the competition for global capital, if we do not start focusing nationally on a strategic direction for our infrastructure, we will lose capital and we will lose the global race to nations with strategic priorities and good execution.

When we look at the serious bottlenecks, particularly in transport, water and broadband, we realise the nation’s capacity is being held back. To create economic growth we need to invest in infrastructure. Not only does infrastructure enhance economic growth; what we will do by improving infrastructure, particularly transport and energy infrastructure, is reduce the cost of doing business. Reducing infrastructure bottlenecks will help to try and re-cork the not so affectionately named ‘Liberal inflation genie’ which was released from the bottle by the previous government.

Developing our infrastructure will help us to capture export growth opportunities. For example, improving the rail links to major iron ore and local ports in the northern part of Western Australia and in New South Wales and Queensland will help capture opportunities to meet the high level of demand from China and India for our resources. As a young union official flying around the country, talking to workers in all of the energy producing and primary producing areas of Australia, it was a source of some national shame to see all these ships tied up offshore when in fact, if we had had national strategic leadership on this question, we could have been capitalising even further on the remarkable minerals boom globally.

We need leadership in infrastructure. That is what this legislation provides. I believe that politics in Australia needs to understand that there is a bigger risk of underreacting to infrastructure than there is of overreacting. Leadership is what this bill will provide—leadership that has long been on holiday in this nation. It will come as no surprise that it is a Labor government that is putting forward this bill, because Labor has always been the party of nation building, the party of the future, not the party of the past. Labor has always had long-term vision. Without long-term vision it is impossible to build the infrastructure this nation needs.

Early last year we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a remarkable accomplishment. Look at the pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge when it was first opened. When it was planned and built in the early part of last century, when horses were still common in the streets of Sydney and cars were the province of the wealthy and the lucky, someone decided to build a bridge with eight car lanes. Who on earth, these days, is thinking about building roads which will cover our future needs as opposed to just our immediate needs? I think that that is the sort of planning for the future which we need to recapture.

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