Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I was pleased to listen to the member for Chifley and particularly his earlier pronouncements on the significant change in the balance of the parliament in recent days. I think that the 50 per cent increase in Independent representation is one of the most significant changes that have occurred. It is quite possibly the most significant change in politics this week!

It is with pleasure that I speak to the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. Transportation is obviously a very important issue. It is very important particularly—and I note that the member for Chifley said this—to people in regional areas. The equity issues of funding are obviously issues that raise their heads quite often in this place.

I am also pleased to see the member for Page in the chamber, because there are a number of common transportation issues that affect our borders. I was going to mention this a little later, but I will do it now. One of the transportation issues that we would like looked at in the New England electorate and, I am sure, in Page as well—and also in the southern Queensland federal seats—is the interconnecting road from Legume to Woodenbong. A lot of people will not know where those places are. Legume is in the electorate of New England; it is just south of the Queensland border. Legume and Warwick are on the edge of the Darling Downs. There are large transport movements through to the North Coast—Lismore, Casino, those areas. The Legume to Woodenbong road is currently considered a local road. It is obviously in need of major repair, and it is completely unaffordable for the local council, which happens to be a council of New England, the Tenterfield Shire Council.

I, along with the member for Page and others from the Darling Downs, South-East Queensland and northern New South Wales areas, had a series of meetings with the Downs to Rivers Action Committee. They have been meeting for many years. Some funding has been coming through to them to alleviate some of the very bad spots on that particular road. I think they attracted some funds under the former government’s ‘roads of regional significance’ program. Under the new government, roads like that really need to be looked at because the benefit flows not just to the ratepayer or the council area through which the road goes. An obvious linkage benefit and economic benefit could be accrued to South-East Queensland, New England and the North Coast. I know the member for Page has been very active on that issue as well. We have attended a couple of meetings together on that issue.

Whilst I am talking about a wish list I will raise a couple of other issues relating to the electorate of New England. As most people would be aware, a lot of the freight movements—in fact, 50 per cent—in eastern Australia originate from the Hunter Valley or the north-west of New South Wales. There are 220 million tonnes of identified freight that move somewhere on the east coast—Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland. Half of it is in that corridor.

I think people are well aware of the development of the coal industry north of the Liverpool Range, which is adjacent to the Hunter Valley, where there have been massive coal deposits. A third coal loader is currently being built at the Newcastle port, which will make it the biggest coal port in the world. Once the third loader is put in place, obvious bottlenecks are going to accrue at some of the passing loops in the Hunter and the north-west. Another issue is the capacity to get large trains over the Murrurundi range or the Liverpool Range. There is a tunnel, which is highly inadequate. They use what are called bank engines to try to push trains and help them over the range. They have recently been able to increase the size of the trains from I think 42 wagons to 72 to alleviate a particular problem.

If Minister Albanese were serious about doing something about major bottlenecks, major pieces of infrastructure, where the economy would benefit, this is a classic example, where, for some hundreds of millions of dollars—probably $200 to $300 million—this bottleneck at the Murrurundi range could be alleviated. The size of trains could again be doubled and the capacity to have an impact on the cost of freight and to export coal could really open up. That is a real priority, not only for my seat, because it would impact on the seats of Parkes and New England, the various Hunter Valley seats and the member for Shortland’s community of Newcastle. There are a whole range of flow-on effects. Most importantly—and it is not only about coal but about grain and other exports as well—it would have a significant flow-on effect to the economy of Australia.

We have the AusLink document, which is the blueprint for the future, and we have Infrastructure Australia currently looking at priorities. If we are going to be serious about the future, we have to really look at these particular areas. In some cases, that might damage the politics of the day, but under the previous administration we saw far too many cases where infrastructure was targeted not based on priority but based on location—on the politics of particular seats. To be fair, I would have to say that I am smelling a similar brew with the new government, particularly with some of the talk, in our chamber at least, about the money that needs to be spent in Sydney and how the previous administration ignored Sydney, so they say, in relation to some infrastructure needs.

I would argue that there are significant infrastructure needs in Sydney, particularly in terms of rail and some in terms of ports. But this constant devotion to more freeways in Sydney—and I know some of those are pay as you go, but there is a lot of government money going into those projects as well—this devotion to clogging up those arteries and then building new arteries, will never solve the problem. There are solutions out there, and I think the government has got to start looking at some of those solutions rather than responding with the knee-jerk reaction when people start whingeing to their local members about getting stuck in traffic jams: they build another freeway to stop them whingeing for five minutes, and then they crank up again. They will always do that. Given this carbon-conscious economy that we are supposedly living in now, particularly given the health impacts of what is happening in Sydney with the geography of the Blue Mountains et cetera, continually promoting the use of the family car to drive to a central point—doing what we are doing now—and then pouring more money into that sort of system is, I think, very short-sighted at the very least.

There are other areas that I would like to raise in relation to this piece of legislation. I mentioned the Legume to Woodenbong road that the member for Page has been involved in. The New England Highway traverses about seven electorates, I think, but a significant part of it is in the electorate of New England. There is one section of that road, only about 1.8 kilometres, that is highly dangerous—probably the most dangerous section left on the road. There has been quite a lot of money spent over the years on fixing up the really bad spots on it. We would all like more money spent on roads. I would like more money spent on those key priority areas where there are real dangers. As some members of the chamber would know, the Bolivia Hill, south of Tenterfield, is a highly dangerous area—there was a death there a few years ago. It is narrow and it would involve a major reconstruction. But I would place on notice again for Minister Albanese that that section of road is possibly the worst of the New England Highway between Sydney and Brisbane, the worst piece of road that is left. It is a short piece, 1.8 kilometres, to fix, and there will be deaths on that section of the road otherwise. There have been in the past and there will be again.

There is a farcical situation that develops in this place where the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority claims to have ownership of all the money and all of the decision-making processes and then, when something is built, the minister and the Commonwealth claim the accolades for having supplied the money to have it built. This tennis match of who makes the decision about prioritising major upgrades of our roads, which is quite handy for the political players, has to stop as well. I implore the minister to go and have a look at this piece of road south of Tenterfield on the New England Highway, the Bolivia Hill. It is very, very dangerous indeed. Even at low speeds it is quite dangerous, particularly with heavy transport using that road.

The other area—and I have spoken to the minister privately about this particular issue—is the need for a bypass around Tenterfield. Tenterfield is probably one of the most beautiful little towns in my electorate, with some magnificent buildings, but it does have a very narrow main street. There is a slope coming in one side and a slope coming in the other. They have tried to slow the traffic flow and do a whole range of things. Because of the narrowness of the street and the location of the shopping precinct et cetera, B-doubles and other heavy transport should not be going down that street. So I have asked the minister for some funding to go into a feasibility study to design a bypass for the future. That will have to happen. Again, I would not be doing my duty in this place if I did not raise that, because it is a deathtrap waiting to happen. There have been people killed there and there will be again. It is something that we really need to start looking at.

There are many other areas in the electorate that I could mention, but I believe money in any area should be spent on priorities. If that has a negative impact in terms of my electorate, I am not happy but I will go along with it if there are more important areas to spend the money on and some logical basis to that. They are the priorities in my view. Others in the electorate will say, ‘Why didn’t you mention such and such?’ They are the priorities that I see in my electorate at the moment.

Another issue that I would raise is AusLink. The reason for AusLink is to develop transport policy for the future. It seems to me that most of that future is predicated on the assumption that the sorts of transport movements that we have had in the past will be the sorts of transport movements we will have in the future. That might be all very well, but the other player—the elephant in the room in all of this—is this so-called climate change, carbon emissions, global-warming debate and what that means for the future of transportation. Will we be part of the same sorts of global transportation systems that we have had in the past?

I will raise an example, which one or two people in this room might have heard before. It is something that we do in this country that involves a lot of those transport movements. One of the things we do as a global player is grow wheat. We grow more wheat than we can eat, so we send it overseas and exchange it with whoever we can. Occasionally we have to offer some money to an Arab or something to try and sell it but we exchange it for currency. Because we do not produce all the energy that we need here, a lot of that money goes into purchasing energy, in the form of oil. If—and the member for Chifley touched on this briefly—we are going to go into a carbon footprint type economy globally, what will that mean in terms of those transportation movements?

Look at that wheat grower, for instance, whom I have referred to as the Walgett wheat grower, who is 500 kilometres from the port. Because of changes in technology, his carbon footprint on the farm has been reduced in the last 20 years, and with those sorts of farming technologies he is actually starting to accumulate carbon in the soil, which could be part of the solution to the carbon problem. But he has a carbon footprint from the farm to his silo; he will have a carbon footprint from his silo to the Port of Newcastle; the ship that takes the grain to Egypt or wherever will have a carbon footprint to the Middle East; and the product that he is carrying, the starch in that grain, will have a carbon footprint of itself. What is all that going to mean not only in terms of the profitability of growing the product, to start with, but in terms of who pays for the carbon movements, and why are those movements occurring in the first place? Is there another way of reducing those transport movements and, if there is, what does that mean in terms of the requirements for AusLink and others to make investments in some of that infrastructure?

I have argued from time to time—as the member for Chifley did a moment ago—that in that context, rather than sending that grain overseas, with all those carbon footprints, and buying oil and sending it back, with all those carbon footprints, to feed a domestic industry with energy, maybe what we should do is look at either converting that grain or changing the land use of that land to the production of cellulosic ethanol, for instance, which would have another positive carbon footprint on the soil. Maybe we should look at using that energy domestically rather than growing something we have too much of to send to someone else to buy something else that we do not have enough of, which is what we do in global trade.

A lot of people would say, ‘You can’t do that; we’ve got to feed the starving millions.’ We have an obligation to feed the starving millions but, as you would realise, Mr Deputy Speaker, to feed the starving millions you have got to be able to feed yourself. The profitability of agriculture starts to come into that context. If all of these carbon footprints are going to become negatives in terms of agriculture, surely we have to look at other aspects of agriculture, and maybe not all of our land should be tied up in producing food. As I said, it might go into producing cellulose, which can be converted into a range of products, including ethanol and biogas produced through anaerobic digestion. Other technologies can play an important role if we are serious about the climate change arrangements.

People will say, ‘But you can’t just walk away from the starving millions.’ I suggest that the government have a very close look at Africa, for instance and what we are not doing there to encourage food production. The country of Sudan, for instance, has 100 million acres of Walgett-style country. It is a similar environment with beautiful soil, but they are starving. Australia produces, in a good season, seven per cent of the world’s total grain production, I think. Sudan could produce 10 per cent. In that context, I suggest that we need to review what we are doing, why we are doing it and what this means in terms of the debate about food, fuel and carbon. It is a significant debate that we have to have, and it should have real relevance to AusLink and the transportation movements that we are planning. The planning process that has gone into this has been based on the planning process of the previous government, which was based on prehistory. I do not see any allowance for a carbon conscious society in any of this move forward. (Time expired)

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