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

I am getting to it. The former member for Gwydir talked about AusLink being the greatest infrastructure project since the Snowy Mountains scheme. It beggars belief you could even compare the two in the same century, let alone one with the other. They are not even remotely similar in the sort of courage or commitment that was displayed. We supported AusLink 1 and AusLink 2. We will keep those programs and we will improve them. But we will go a step further than the former government. We are going to approach this from a real sense of partnership with the state governments, whoever they may be, and local governments. Infrastructure in this country is far too important to leave up to individuals and parties who hack it in for themselves. That is exactly what we got.

While we are going back to the last century in terms of records, let me remind the former government, the coalition, of this: we now have some of the highest inflation that this country has had in some 16 years. Ordinary people, working people, are under real pressure. There are a whole range of economic circumstances where, while the economy generally speaking is good, there is a lot of pressure. You cannot argue the economic data. You cannot argue just one side of it; you have to argue both sides. But the real way forward in this is not only good economic management, which we are doing right now—tackling inflation and taking the pressure off high interest rates—but infrastructure, actually getting the productive capacity of this country up to a reasonable level. The problem we are going to face in the next two to three to five years is that, while we will continue to dig up the same amount of, or more, coal, we are not going to be able to ship it out. If coal prices, steel prices or the prices of other natural resources come down, we are going to feel the real economic impact of that.

The former government, the Howard government, had an absolute boom in terms of nearly $400 billion added to the bottom line of the economy. It is easy to be a good Treasurer in great economic times; it is much, much harder, as we see the former Treasurer sitting there smirking as he always has, realising that he did not leave the economy in quite as good a condition as he thinks he did. I remember very well in this place the lambasting we used to get from the former Treasurer, coming in here and saying that he was the driver of a Ferrari and that it was a finely tuned racing car, a fine motor vehicle, that could not be entrusted to anyone else. The problem is he drove the Ferrari straight into a brick wall, wrecked it, walked away and then expected everyone else to pick up the pieces.

We are prepared to take on that challenge and we are going to start by doing it right here today in meeting our election commitment of delivering Infrastructure Australia. I highly recommend this legislation to everyone in the House and say to the community simply this: for the first time in Australian history, we will have a regulated, properly controlled body that will look after the infrastructure needs of all Australians, not just those who live in certain seats.

See this speech in context