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

In talking about nation building and nation-building funds, you have to understand one clear principle. It is at the core of what this debate is really about. What do you as a government do to provide for the future? How do you use taxpayers’ dollars in a proper, transparent, accountable way? That is what these bills are about. They are about health and education. There are three funds, nation-building infrastructure, education and health. What is more important in this place than for a government to actually deal with the core issues at hand?

I can tell you that our record in 12 months has already eclipsed the record of the past 12 years. The former government now come into this place—for 12 years they did nothing—and in 12 months they have done everything possible to block any new measures we have, any reforms, any investment, any form of trying to bring stability, credibility and confidence back to the market. How could an opposition do that? I looked very closely at a lot of the policies and what they actually delivered for people now, now that people are in need, now it is actually raining. Governments are supposed to do probably two things in essence: one is to build for the future and the other is to make sure that they have something in reserve, something ready to go when there is a rainy day, when there is a crisis.

Thank God there was the election of a Rudd Labor government last year because we had already been working on, for example, the bill that we are talking about today. We had already been structuring and working on the policy, years of work had gone into infrastructure policy, to make sure that it would provide for this country into the future in education and in health. It is not as though the other side did not have an opportunity. It is not as though, in those lost Howard years, they did not have an opportunity. They sat back; they enjoyed the good times. It was a huge party. Being in government was always about smiles, about handing out millions of dollars to your mates, about not worrying about what the future was going to be like. They did not have to worry about it because during their reign, particularly in the last year, it was all blue sky sailing—the resources boom would go on forever.

We have a former resources minister here, and I remember quite clearly some of the rhetoric that came from him and some of the people that he was involved with, certainly from the then Howard government, about how there was a 20-year run. The resources boom would go on forever. Everything that went wrong was always the fault of the states, but when it actually came to the crunch we actually talked about having to have more than that because, when the resources boom is over, what are you left with? Only what is in your head, and that is your smarts. The only thing that you can rely on in the end is how clever you are. How do you provide for that cleverness? You provide it through education. How do you do that? You actually have to invest in it. You have to put money down on the table. You have to provide the funding for it. You have to make sure that our schools are properly equipped. We do not need those old tired debates about government schools versus non-government schools. No-one even cares about those tired old debates—about the percentage of federal government funding which goes into XY school compared to the percentage of kids from what background go there. That is not the debate. The debate should be about how we best provide for all young people in this country to get a decent opportunity.

The great innovators in this country are probably in rural and regional areas that do not get the resources that they need to get the opportunity to perform. That is what is at the core of the bills that are before us today. We are going to be out there building the roads, the ports and the rail network and working on the productive means to make this country more efficient. Not only are we going to do that, not only are we going to provide the essential infrastructure, social and hard infrastructure, but we are going to do it in a proper, transparent and accountable way. We are going to do it in a way that does not just rely on a single person or an inner circle of people making a decision on billions of dollars of funding in totality just based on which electorate you belong to. We are going to look at this in an objective manner. That is why we have set up Infrastructure Australia. That is why we have these funds in place. That is why it is part of legislation—to make sure we do this right. You have to get it right. You have to be big enough, you have to at least be responsible enough, to say that you cannot be the fount of all knowledge and that every decision you make cannot always be the best decision unless you get some sound advice, unless you consult the community, unless you go out there and are prepared to make decisions like we have made.

There are good examples already. Out of the top 10 infrastructure projects being funded currently, only two are in Labor electorates. The other eight are in country and rural seats, Liberal seats and National Party seats. That is fine; I do not mind. I do not care. In fact, I support it because if we are going to talk about the national interest, the national economy, about being productive in this country and making sure that we have jobs growth to insulate ourselves against the global financial crisis then we have to do this from a national perspective. It does not matter which colour the seat is, red or blue; it does not matter whether it is Independent.

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