Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

To add insult to injury: for the projects that are being funded, what is going to happen? I asked the question, ‘Is your super really yours?’ As taxpayers we have been bombarded with rhetoric about the wonders and benefits of the $42 billion nation-building plan and we have even footed the advertising bill. But we are going to pay for much more than just advertising. The government cannot actually afford to pay for all of these projects it has committed to so it is seeking private investors. The trouble is private investors have more sense than to put money into poorly-costed and financially unviable projects. So where is the money going to come from? The government’s advisory group, Infrastructure Australia, has the answer. The plan is to use the $1 trillion of superannuation that Australians have put away for their retirement to plug the $58 billion hole in the disastrous Nation Building Program. I will come back to that in due course.

This is what North Queenslanders are seeing, and they are asking these questions. Why did 15,934 dead people get an estimated $14.3 million in tax bonus payments? How could that be? How is it that Labor is spending $50.8 million to advertise Labor policy? How is it that the broadband waste keeps coming? Taxpayers will pay $703,000 worth of expenses racked up by Labor’s broadband panel of experts and we have this ongoing problem with potholes on the Bruce Highway. The cash splash has put our AAA credit rating at risk, and all Australians will be very concerned about that.

This bill before the parliament is just another example of the Rudd Labor government’s obsession with spin. This bill seeks to rename the AusLink program, which was established by the coalition government in 2005, as members know. It was a landmark program when it was established. It created the first national transport framework in Australia. AusLink 1 commenced in 2004-05 and ran to 2008-09. AusLink 2 was scheduled to run from 2009-10 to 2013-14, until Labor became determined to rename the program. The Labor Party referred to AusLink during the 2007 federal election campaign. From 2008, however, it became clear that the new Rudd government disliked referring to a successful coalition program, so the renaming process began. The first attempt, in December 2008, was to call it the Building Australia program. This must have failed the test of Labor’s spin doctors, as the second name was developed just three months later in February 2009. The AusLink program has begun to be referred to as the Nation Building program; thus we see the new name in the present bill. What we can see from the Rudd government is a desire to claim a successful coalition program as their own—and I mean a successful coalition program. Rather than display true commitment to the Australian transport network, the bill displays the Rudd government’s commitment to spin.

Labor has driven us into debt. It has turned a healthy surplus left by the coalition government into $58 billion of debt this coming year. During this time of economic crisis, rather than show true commitment to Australian transport networks, it is more concerned with political acts of renaming projects. Labor has lost control. Labor has lost control of the nation’s finances. Labor’s reckless spending has built a mountain of debt we may never pay off. Everything Labor touches turns to debt. Two-thirds of Labor’s debt is the product of its own new spending commitments. Labor has spent $10 million an hour for every hour since it was elected on new commitments, which is extraordinary.

Labor are assuming 12 years of economic miracles to pay off their mountain of debt by 2022. We all see, as we sit in question time, Labor’s refusal to answer the opposition’s questions about how that debt is actually going to be paid off, and you can see by their silence they do not know. I hope the Australian people see that. Labor are not known for presiding over economic miracles or paying off debt, especially under Rudd and Swan; and, alas, I think our strong record of paying off Labor’s debt will be required again when we return to government. We will make those tough decisions necessary to do it.

The member for Dawson now has to answer the following point: the coalition, of course, is committed to Australia’s transport infrastructure, and that is why we pledged an investment of $31 billion in 2007-08 for AusLink 2, but that is not what we see now from the Labor government. Labor has not committed the same level of funding to the national transport network. Despite all the rhetoric we hear, Labor has not committed the same level of funding that we committed to the national transport network.

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