Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the allocation of expenditure in this portfolio. Since my appointment on 3 December it has indeed been a very busy six months in the job, which culminated in the budget in May. In that six months we have appointed Australia’s first ever infrastructure minister. We have created a new department, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. We have begun setting up the Building Australia Fund, with an initial $20 billion down payment. That was of course a centrepiece of this budget. We have placed traffic congestion, urban planning and public transport back on the national agenda with the establishment of a Major Cities Unit and the allocation of $75 million within our first budget to progress planning on eight landmark, congestion-busting, nation-building infrastructure projects.

We have honoured all of Labor’s pre-election road and rail commitments in our first budget, bringing forward half a billion dollars to start work at least 12 months early on a number of critical election commitments. I have chaired two meetings of the nation’s transport ministers, the Australian Transport Council, and secured agreement on new, fairer road-user charges for heavy vehicles and provided a $70 million package to tackle heavy vehicle fatalities and lift productivity. Unfortunately, these have been blocked in the Senate at this stage by the coalition, in spite of the fact that this was coalition policy prior to the election and that the process of moving towards full cost recovery for heavy vehicles was begun by the coalition. We have obtained in-principle support for a new beginning for transport, a national action plan for keeping people and freight moving. We have launched a new and innovative road safety program funded in the budget, Keys to Drive, which will provide more than 200,000 free driving lessons to learner drivers and their parents. We have provided the ARTC with $15 million and asked it to determine, once and for all, the economic merits and financial viability of a second railway between Melbourne and Brisbane, one running through the central west of New South Wales. We have unveiled a fuel consumption label for all new cars sold in Australia which spells out each heavy vehicle’s emissions and fuel consumption in both city and highway conditions.

On aviation, we have commissioned Australia’s first ever aviation white paper, with the purpose of addressing the industry’s current challenges and guiding its growth over the coming two decades. We have finalised a long awaited open skies agreement with the US, secured additional capacity on air routes between Australia and Malaysia and taken an important step towards the liberalisation of air services between Australia and the EU. We have brought in industry experts to review the effectiveness and adequacy of security screening at the nation’s airports. We have signed a transport security cooperation agreement with the government of Indonesia. We have reinstated ACCC monitoring of car-parking fees at the nation’s biggest airports—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

On maritime we have asked a bipartisan parliamentary committee to consult and come forward with recommendations that will revitalise the coastal shipping industry, and we have legislation to deal with the issue of spillages of oil that has been introduced to the parliament just today. On regional development and local government, we have started overhauling and restoring public confidence in the Commonwealth’s various regional development programs. We have established Regional Development Australia.

On the legislative program, we have made sure that we have introduced legislation to give Australians flying overseas access to fairer compensation in the event of an airline accident, following nine years of inaction by the previous government, and we have made sure that big oil and shipping companies responsible for oil spills within Australian waters are held financially accountable for the damage caused.

It has been a very big six months, but I am very pleased that we have honoured all of our commitments, including those financial commitments that were made in the budget. I am very proud of the work that my department have been responsible for during the first six months of the Rudd government. (Time expired)

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