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

I thank the member for Forde for his question. Indeed, the government’s nation-building agenda has received widespread support. That is not surprising, because we went to the election with a plan to have an infrastructure minister and infrastructure department, and we have done it. We had a mandate to introduce legislation to establish Infrastructure Australia, and we have done it. We had a mandate to establish the Building Australia Fund, and we have done it. We did this over a number of years in the lead-up to the November 2007 election. In that period we were surprised, frankly, that the opposition continued to ignore infrastructure, as they had for 12 long years. It is therefore not surprising that the government’s agenda, particularly the agenda of establishing nation-building funds in terms of infrastructure, education infrastructure and health infrastructure, has received such widespread support. We stated that our priorities would be rail, road, ports and broadband. Once again, that has received widespread support from the Australian business community. Just yesterday the International Monetary Fund released a report endorsing the government’s strong approach on these issues. That is why I was surprised that those opposite have learnt absolutely nothing during this process. In today’s Australian, on top of their attempt to trash our budget surplus, the new shadow minister for infrastructure—they did not bother having an infrastructure minister in government—has threatened to oppose the Building Australia Fund. He has threatened to oppose nation building—quite an extraordinary position.

They have come up with a whole range of reasons for that perhaps being the case. They have argued that there are some weaknesses in the Infrastructure Australia legislation. I remind them that they moved amendments in the Senate, which we rejected when they came back to the House, and then they folded their deck of cards and voted for Infrastructure Australia. They did that because of pressure from the business community, who want a nation-building agenda, but also because of pressure from people in their electorates, who want issues such as urban congestion addressed with support and national coordination from the federal government.

There is criticism about some of the arrangements that are made regarding the way that the fund will be managed. That is pretty extraordinary, too, because of course we have stated that the Future Fund Board of Guardians, which they set up, will manage the funds. We are currently finalising the arrangements to allow the fund to be set up by 1 January 2009.

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