Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a great day today is for Australia. What a great day for infrastructure. In the true tradition of the Labor Party as nation builders, we are actually doing something in our first 100 days in government to make a significant improvement to this nation’s infrastructure—and not just meeting the need for physical infrastructure but improving how the process is managed and how we bring it forward. That was our commitment to the electorate and we are going to keep that commitment. In the great tradition of the Labor Party which saw us, in the eighties and nineties, reform the financial markets and banking, today we are reforming infrastructure. Today we are taking the next great step forward in terms of the things that need to be done in this country. I have always said that if the last 20 years were about anything they were about financial reform, banking reform and the economic status of this country. The next 20 years are about infrastructure reform. That is what we are doing today in delivering on our promise.

I have to just take note here of comments by the previous speaker, the member for Maranoa. What he talked about was a great long list of everything that the coalition, in nearly 12 years in government, did not do—everything they ignored, everything they set to the side, everything they underfunded, everything they were going to do, but nothing that they actually did apart from sticking a few fences in a few spots and maybe a couple of bits and pieces of roads, which were all very welcome but, funnily enough, mostly in National Party seats. That was the great irony in the previous speaker saying he hoped this measure would not be used as a rort. If he knew anything about the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, if he understood anything about the process that has been put together in formulating this legislation, he would know that that is precisely the reason the Labor Party and the government have moved to set up Infrastructure Australia and the infrastructure coordinator. It is to take away the pork-barrelling and the rorting and to give this country a decent shot at the proper use of taxpayer funds to deliver infrastructure where it is needed most, and on a priority basis, not just where the National Party needs it most. So today is a very great day for all Australians because this legislation will make a huge difference and have a huge impact. This will set the scene for the next 20 years.

In 20 years time, people will look back to this bill and say that it was the great regulatory change that brought in the framework that enabled the building of key infrastructure in this nation that would otherwise not have been possible because of the way, for more than a decade, that infrastructure had been misused, misrepresented, underfunded, pork-barrelled and completely botched by the previous government. I always lament all those missed opportunities, all the money that went to one project when it should not have gone there at all. Of course every project is important. However, some projects were not asked for or required by the local area, but they got the money anyway. The great thing to be said about Infrastructure Australia is that it will be a framework for guiding and advising government.

I intend to take only 10 minutes in this debate so that the Main Committee can work through the issues it has to handle this afternoon, but I want to run through a few points. With Infrastructure Australia we will have for the first time a national, coordinated approach to infrastructure reform. It is about economic performance. It is about raising national productivity. Those are all key things. I only heard one of the previous speakers from the opposition but I am sure they talked about the legacy they picked up in 1996 and the legacy we have picked up now. Well, let me tell you that the legacy we picked up is the highest inflation in 16 years. This country is under real pressure. Interest rates are going through the roof, with 12 interest rate rises in a row. Productivity is falling through the floor. Our national debt is going through the roof. We have significant problems to deal with. There is a skills crisis and there is an infrastructure crisis. And let us not think for one minute we do not have in this country an infrastructure crisis which will have a real economic impact on everything that takes place.

Look at the infrastructure bottlenecks in terms of our coal, our exports, our agricultural exports, the congestion on our roads and the time it takes people to get to and from work, let alone the goods that travel around this country on our freight roads—there is a really important job to be done. It is not easily done. It takes (a) a lot of money (b) a lot of commitment and (c) a willingness to do it right for the first time in this country. We need a fully coordinated approach through COAG, through the three tiers of government—the federal government, the state governments and local government, in partnership.

You might think it has just been us calling on this to happen, that this was just some sort of election promise. Let me go through a bit of history because I think that is really important here. This mob on the other side, the new opposition, back in 1996 actually had a very similar policy. For a brief moment in history they believed there should be a coordinated approach. But then, when they won power and got drunk on it, they thought: ‘Let’s put that to the side; we’d rather just dictate where the money goes. Let’s forget about coordination; let’s just send it to those seats we think are more important than other seats.’ In the end, if you look at the litany of infrastructure development in this country, it was based more on which seat you held than on what was the biggest priority.

History tells us clearly that key industry groups like the Business Council of Australia, CEDA, Australian Industry Group, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and Engineers Australia all called for a coordinated approach to infrastructure planning and development in this country. But those calls fell on deaf ears because the then Howard government ignored the calls of the community, of the Business Council, of all those independent voices, about what was the best way. They understood, like we understand today, the missing opportunities.

I will give you one in my local area—there are hundreds right across the country. For 10 years I campaigned and lobbied on having the Ipswich Motorway, that vital piece of infrastructure, fully upgraded, not just in my electorate but in the electorate of Blair. Blair was held by a Liberal member who is no longer with us; instead, we now have the very fine member for Blair, Shayne Neumann. I congratulate him for being here for this very important bill. There were a whole heap of other road projects—the Bruce, the Cunningham, the Warrego and a whole range of roads across this country. But it was never important enough for the government, in more than a decade, to ever really do anything about those except when they smelt a political opportunity, saving the backsides of either one of their National Party members or one of their Liberal Party members. When it came to real infrastructure development, real reform, doing something that could be acceptable to the whole community, based on a real outcome in the national interest, we got nothing. That is the outcome from the former government after more than a decade of being in the job.

They talk about the great economy they left us. Let me remind them of the great surpluses they had. We appreciated those surpluses but they were not spent on infrastructure. Where are the great days we used to have when the Labor Party, nation builders, actually did courageous things like the Snowy Mountains scheme?

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