Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Nation-building Funds Bill 2008, cognate with the Nation-building Funds (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2008 and the COAG Reform Fund Bill 2008. The Nation-building Funds Bill establishes three funds: the Building Australia Fund, the Education Investment Fund and the Health and Hospitals Fund. My colleagues and I in the coalition have had a good, close look at the Nation-building Funds Bill and the three funds which it will establish—and with good reason. These three funds are furnished in their entirety, of course, with the wealth of the Australian taxpayers but also as a result of the careful work of the former Howard government, namely the 2007-08 budget surplus, our Higher Education Endowment Fund, our Communications Fund and T3, the third tranche of the sale of Telstra.

My colleagues know, indeed all of Australia and the world know, that the Howard government looked after its fiscal responsibilities with a great deal of care. This included paying off some $96 billion of debt inherited from Labor. Labor left us a $96 billion debt and we left them a $20 billion surplus. A mere 12 months later Mr Swan and Mr Rudd are talking about deficits. I might add also that before us Labor spent 2.9 per cent of GDP on infrastructure; when we left office that figure was 5.4 per cent. No wonder then that the coalition should look very carefully at how Mr Rudd and his colleagues are planning to spend this infrastructure money. It is because of Mr Howard’s and Mr Costello’s exemplary management that this country was the envy of the rest of the world. We were initially at least able to respond to the financial downturn from a debt-free position. It is obvious who is better qualified to comment on how this money should be spent. I hope those opposite are paying close attention to what my colleagues and I have to say in relation to these bills. Perhaps they may just learn something.

One thing the coalition has noticed about nation-building funds is that something seems to be missing. Missing are a whole load of things in fact, many billions of them—dollars, that is. The Rudd-Swan government announced in the 2008 budget that there was going to be $41 billion in the nation-building funds by 1 July 2009, $14.7 billion of which was to come from the 2008-09 surplus. Then Mr Rudd and Mr Swan started to talk about a modest surplus. Now they are talking about deficits. Chris Richardson from Access Economics was quoted last week as saying the budget was probably already in deficit. With the false expectations created pre-election and the consistent diet of spin and hype ever since from this government, the immediate demand for Australia’s infrastructure is projected to be at least 10 times the amount currently held in funds.

Let’s talk about the amount that is currently in funds. The inconvenient truth is that there simply is not enough money there to begin to address the nation’s needs. Given present world financial circumstances, it does not look as if this will change in the next couple of years. There is no immediate evidence that there will be a future surplus to bump up these funds. We are told the $12.6 billion nation-building fund will take $7.5 billion from the 2007-08 budget surplus, $2.7 billion from Telstra 3 and the balance of the Communications Fund, which is a further $2.4 billion. Of course, my colleagues and I do not agree that the Communications Fund should be rolled into the nation-building fund—more details as to why shortly. The $8.7 billion education fund will take $2.5 billion from the 2007-08 surplus and $6.2 billion from the former Higher Education Endowment Fund. The $5 billion health fund is based entirely on the 2007-08 surplus. The total of $26.3 billion is simply not big enough. Running costs for the nation-building projects funded by this money will have to come from elsewhere—from state and territory budgets and from federal budgets. We know that staffing costs alone will create high running costs for health, research and education projects. There will be significant costs for transport, energy, communications and water projects. What is more worrying from our point of view is that states and territories, especially Labor states and territories, may cancel their own funding for infrastructure works and simply take the funds from their federal colleagues to do exactly the same thing.

These bills need to be amended. I said I would elaborate on why I believe the Communications Fund should not be tampered with. These bills will axe the Communications Fund and channel its $2.4 billion into the nation-building fund. This Communications Fund was set up to meet the future telecommunications technology needs of people in regional areas in perpetuity—people like those in the 2.3 million square kilometres of regional area in my electorate of Kalgoorlie. With a budget in deficit how is the government planning to upgrade regional telecommunications infrastructure when this fund is closed? Once again, Mr Rudd and Mr Swan have demonstrated—

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