Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009 reinforces what we already know about the Rudd Labor government: it is all about spin. It has certainly been about debt, spending, unemployment and running an economy into the ground, but fundamentally it has been about spin. We are all amazed that this government has managed to blow a budget deficit of more than $20 billion and turn it into an astonishing $58 billion deficit in just 18 months. We already know that Australia is facing a gross debt of at least $315 billion, or around $15,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And of course that $315 billion does not include the $40 billion that is going to have to be borrowed for the broadband fantasy or the $60 billion for projects that have been referred to by the government in its Nation Building Program, for which additional money is required. We do not know how much we are up for with the Ruddbank or how much for defence commitments and any number of other spending initiatives that the government may be intending to take between now and the time when that debt peaks. We also know that a very large proportion of this debt is due not to revenue downturns but to reckless spending decisions that the government has taken.

But what is worst of all is that there is no plan to repay this money. Labor has no idea where the funds are going to come from to repay the spending spree that has been going on in recent times. We all know that there is really only one plan: to spend, spend, spend and then rely on the next coalition government to pay it off. It took 10 years to pay off the last debt. How long is it going to take to pay off the current one?

Labor often criticises the coalition for not having spent enough when in government. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is a frequent offender in this regard, saying, ‘We are spending where the previous government didn’t spend.’ What the minister for infrastructure needs to remember is that when we were in government we were paying for what Labor spent the last time it was in government. The key issue is not so much how much you can spend in a day but how much you can actually pay for.

In fact, there are many things that the previous coalition government would have loved to have done—worthwhile projects we would have liked to have pursued—but we could not because we had an interest and redemption bill to pay on the previous government’s mismanagement. Of course, the next coalition government is going to face similar difficulties. No-one believes that any Labor government will ever retire debt. The reality is that the next coalition government will also not be able to spend as much as we would like on roads, rail and other things because we will be paying off debt. But that is not something that Labor should be boasting about; they should be ashamed of the fact that they will leave behind such a deficit for future governments and future generations to repay. To be out there boasting about how much is going to be spent, when all of that money is going to have to be borrowed, much of it from overseas, so that these projects can proceed, is only telling a very small proportion of the story. There are potholes that will not be filled in the future because of the expenditure that is going on today. When you buy a new car, you get the pleasure out of the purchase of that car, but you cannot afford to buy another one until you have paid off the one you have. You spend the next few years going without other things because you are paying off your car. This kind of simple lesson in household budgeting seems to have been lost on the incumbents on the government benches.

The government uses a lot of rhetoric and spin to talk about the work that it has been doing—the so-called revolutionary processes and the biggest spending program in history—all of which is essentially empty spin. Infrastructure Australia, for instance, is not the first to have some kind of a process to assess projects on their merits. Infrastructure Australia is not the first to have transparent opportunities for public input into assessing road projects and making decisions about infrastructure expenditure. AusLink was established to achieve those sorts of objectives. It involved consultation with the states. The community even had opportunities to make suggestions about projects which should be considered, and that entire process was undertaken in a fair and appropriate manner. If there is some suggestion that there was a coalition conspiracy about the projects that were funded, I would remind you that all of the state governments were Labor for a fair proportion of that time and they were actively involved as partners in this process and were generally co-funders. So, in reality, there has always been an open and transparent process. In fact, a stark change in the way in which this government is dealing with issues is that the processes of Infrastructure Australia are clearly not open and transparent. They are not available for public scrutiny. None of the documents are going to be released. We saw the spectacle during Senate estimates yesterday of the minister flatly refusing to provide any of the data that might support the choices that the government has made in relation to the funding announcements. I am going to talk more about that later.

This legislation is another example of where spin is actually triumphing over economic sustainability. It is an example of spin to cover up economic incompetence. The key element of this bill is a name change. That is right; it is just a name change. It is changing the name of AusLink to the Nation Building Program. It is remarkable that the government would consider using the resources of the public purse, the time needed to draft legislation and the priority given in parliament to what is essentially a piece of spin-doctoring. It is perhaps not surprising, though, because the government think that using the time of this place for a rebranding exercise, to change the name of something that was a great success but is also linked to the previous government, is a worthwhile activity. The government are trying to wipe out the memory of AusLink. AusLink in the hearts of Australians is associated with the previous government, and we cannot have anything good that the people love find its way through a Labor government. So they changed the name. This has been a successful program and its name is being changed for no other reason than it was associated with the previous government.

During the election campaign Labor were quite happy to talk about projects that were going to be funded under AusLink and AusLink 2. They allowed the word to pass their lips on hundreds of occasions during the election campaign, but when they came into office they started choking on the word. So we started seeing new descriptions of the program that everyone knew was AusLink 2. First they started talking about a ‘building Australia program’. Those words were attached to projects in December 2008, but on 5 February 2009 in a COAG communique AusLink was turned into the Nation Building Program. That is the term that the George Orwell robots in the minister’s office have settled on, and that is why we have this bill of spin and the rewriting of history. It says so much about the government that they consider this legislation a priority to be brought on in budget week.

The bill is designed to encourage the error and create the myth that nation building is something unique to Labor. It is not. We see the Prime Minister running around with his helmet on and the tractors starting up behind him while the television cameras are in sight. That is the kind of thing we are getting—spin and the image but no substance. The commitment to infrastructure lies with those who have delivered it over the years and delivered the sound economic management to be able to build things and pay for them—namely, the coalition. I remind members of the Labor Party that infrastructure spending in Australia boomed during the years of the coalition government. In spite of what you may hear the minister say during question time about us having done nothing in government, the reality is that, according to the engineering construction activity index published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in constant 2007 dollar terms infrastructure spending increased from $21 billion in 1996 to over $56 billion by 2007. Put another way, infrastructure spending in Australia rose from just under three per cent of GDP in 1996 to nearly 5½ per cent of GDP in 2007.

So much for Labor’s claims that infrastructure spending declined under the coalition. It is true that, in the early years of government, the task of repaying the debt consumed resources that might otherwise have been spent on road funding. But when AusLink was introduced there was a massive increase in road funding. For the first time we had a national plan which dealt with infrastructure requirements in the years ahead, a plan which schematically dealt with the corridors around the country, identified the task and looked at the best way to deal with it, whether it be road or rail—and there was a significant increase in expenditure at that time. It was the coalition, not Labor, that established AusLink. It was the coalition, not Labor, that developed Australia’s first national land transport plan since Federation, It was the coalition, not Labor, that massively increased expenditure on upgrading road and rail.

Under AusLink the coalition government spent more on nation building than any other Commonwealth government since Federation. In terms of AusLink 2, the former coalition government in 2007-08 pledged to invest $31 billion in transport infrastructure. Labor have never matched this. They are committing less money over the next five years on transport infrastructure than the coalition had pledged over the same period. In 2009-10, Labor will spend nearly $1.5 billion less on transport than in 2008-09. There are two key points here. Firstly, the Labor Party say they have a huge program on road and rail infrastructure. The truth is that they will spend less on road and rail over the next six years than the coalition had committed—less, not more. This program represents a reduction in expenditure on road and rail from what the coalition had committed. Secondly, the government are talking about an increase in expenditure to deal with a recession, and they say we need to have some kind of stimulus program. They are actually going to spend $1.5 billion less in 2009-10 than has been allocated this year. So the whole of what Labor are talking about is empty spin.

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