Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Considering there are issues of importance in the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009 I intend to speak for some longer period than five minutes, which is apparently all the importance that the government gives to this legislation. There is a good reason for that. I do not always require it, but I thought in looking in this legislation that I might check the Parliamentary Library Bills Digest. And what did that tell me? Under ‘Purpose’ it says:

The main purposes of the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009 are to rename the AusLink (National Land Transport) Act 2005 as the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009, and to replace references to AusLink with Nation Building Program in the AusLink (National Land Transport) Act 2005

That is earth-shattering stuff, typical of a government that deals in spin. Let me say, of my own side of politics, when we started choosing fancy names for things that once were labelled as what they were, like the National Land Transport Act, we eventually got ourselves into trouble. We chose the name ‘Work Choices’, an excellent piece of legislation that left itself open to a simple TV campaign. It struck me later on, when considering the advertisement showing a woman with two children being threatened with the loss of her job, that in fact that ad should have shown the woman telling her boss to stick his job because, under the Howard provisions of Work Choices, she was getting three job offers a week. Those were the circumstances—long gone, because as we read now there is a massive increase in youth unemployment in particular, as people will no longer commit themselves to full-time employment contracts for fear of what that might mean to the future of their business.

This bill is about changing a name. And we are advised that there will be no financial impact. I assume, as one talks about pulping a whole document associated with the budget, there will be a lot of stationery somewhere being pulped on the passing of this legislation. There will be signs all over the place that one can only assume will have to be either repainted or otherwise taken out. Yes, of course there will be cost—and it is not a cost that helps the nation. That is just the first point, but what a wonderful opportunity it has created for the minister to make a second reading speech and read out pages of the jobs to be done.

There is another issue, of course—that is, that the five minutes that have been granted to each government spokesman have been used almost entirely to make a false statement. The false statement is that the opposition opposes this legislation; we treat it with contempt. Hidden away, as so typically occurs in inconsequential legislation, is a little trick. It changes the places where you can expend money on black spots. The member for Isaacs mentioned a couple which occurred in his electorate under the present arrangements. The Black Spot Program was funded to make sure that local government entities, suburbs and regions had some money to address issues where public safety was of major concern. I well remember in one part of my electorate that street lighting was erected on an out-of-town road where Indigenous people used to cross the road, because people were getting run over. Not wearing orange jackets and hard hats, they were not easily identifiable without some lights. That was the purpose of black spot funding. The Hawke government found that it was rather useless and cancelled it altogether, but the suggestion to a group of what I would have thought were reasonably hardened politicians that you can open up the transfer of that expenditure to national highways without a significant loss of funding from where it was originally targeted is farcical. Clearly, if this segment of the bill is passed and the opposition proposes an amendment that money will just be filtered away.

You might say, ‘Well, the Treasurer had a visit from an ambulance operator who spoke of the difficulties on a national highway.’ Of course difficulties exist, and I want to come back to a specific, but the situation is that there is a mass of funding. Historically, the Commonwealth took responsibility for national highways. The mistake that was made was to allow state road-building agencies (a) to identify the priority and (b) to spend the money. I can take you to the national highway system in my electorate, which, as you would understand, is very significant in length and substance, and show where sections of road have been built at the expense of the Australian taxpayer—not at the expense of this parliament or that government but at the expense of the Australian taxpayer—and ripped up later on because they got it wrong. The point I am making, nevertheless, is that huge amounts of money are allocated in the budget and always have been.

One would have thought that the decision makers might have looked at these road systems. The previous Speaker has talked in this place about building a length of four-lane highway on the Hume Highway and then stopping it. People think they are still on a four-lane highway and all of a sudden there is a truck on the same side of the road as they are. In other words, one would think that the decision makers, in considering the necessary upgrades of these major highway networks for efficiency and other reasons, would as a matter of form take account of public safety. They do not have to steal the money identified for $100,000 projects which would save people’s lives when they plan a superhighway and make links between capital cities. There is no point at all in that. The member for Isaacs might wait for the next black spot project to boast about in his own electorate, if it happens. If he has an interest in the people in his own electorate, I invite him to vote with us on an amendment to leave the status quo in that regard. It is not a lot of money, but it is at least directed to smaller community projects. That is what I said a moment ago about public safety, and I know the member for Forrest has somewhat agreed.

In terms of public safety, there is a major project that is now virtually accepted as being a proposal of the Gallop and Carpenter governments in Western Australia. More particularly, I think it got a mention in the second reading speech—although that is a little bit vague. The Howard government, and in particular the members for Forrest and Canning, where the problem was located, became deeply conscious of one fatality a week on the road that connects what was the Kwinana Freeway through to Mandurah and Bunbury. Bunbury-Busselton is a big growth area, and the member for Forrest is representing it very well. In fact, the freeway had to be extended all the way down as a four-lane highway. It was a state road. One of the great tragedies of the good political by-line ‘we will no longer have the blame game’ is that it was not smart in representing the interests of the public as taxpayers. There is a responsibility on the government that raises 90 per cent of Australia’s taxes and pays 50 per cent of the operating costs of state governments to see that the Australian taxpayer gets a fair go. The reality was that this road had to be extended, and at the time, according to the estimate of the state government, it was going to cost $300 million or $400 million. The Howard government said, ‘We’ll pay half.’ It is not within the normal compass of federal government expenditure, which of course deals 100 per cent with national highways and 50 per cent with roads of national importance, but we said: ‘We can’t go on killing people like this. We’ve got to do something about it.’

There is some suggestion now that this lady—Alana MacTiernan—might even oppose the member for Canning at the next election. Let us talk about her. When the proposition was made, she refused the money. She continued to refuse the money: ‘Don’t let’s worry about a few people knocking themselves off on the road; that happens every year.’ This was preventable by government expenditure. At a meeting with WA state Liberal members it was proposed to the minister for transport that all roads moneys to Western Australia be discontinued until the state government accepted the money and committed to building this road. Do you know what MacTiernan’s response to that was? She put an ad in the paper brutalising the Howard government for stealing money from the Western Australian road system when in fact the truth was that we were offering $170 million. During the negotiations she upped the ante and said, ‘We got the estimate for this road wrong.’ As time has gone by, it has gone up. It would now probably cost $600 million. I think this government has continued to make contributions, and I applaud that. But the fact is that she would not take the money.

Because of the publicity campaign, our minister was concerned. He was concerned that the other money was a matter of agreement, and he called us together again and said, ‘I think I should just give them the standard grant’—of which $100 million was going to be spent in my electorate—’and we’ll fight about the other bit.’ I and others who had a substantial interest in where that money was going said no. We had this funny idea that saving people’s lives was some responsibility of federal members of parliament. We said, ‘You just stick with it.’ To his credit, the minister did stick with it. Then the state government caved in. They suddenly discovered that the people of Bunbury thought the road project was a pretty good idea and they were getting close to sacking the then sitting Labor member. That was a pretty lousy reason for caving in.

I think the road will be opened within weeks. Another interesting factor is that half the world does not know a major project of this nature is going on because there has not been one day lost to strike. Why? It is because a condition of our funding was that it had to be run under Commonwealth industrial law as it existed then. Compare that with another infrastructure project which the WA state government can take full responsibility for—the Mandurah passenger railway line. There is nearly a 50 per cent increase in costs for that project, mostly attributable to the bastardry of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. That is still being debated in court and hundreds of millions of dollars in extras are being claimed by the contractors.

Let us have a look at how this is going to work. It has been established that this is a bill about a name change, with a little thing stuck in there—a bit like in the American congress, where you get a bill on immigration and there is something on the end of it about defence, social security or something else. That in itself is rather a waste of time. I looked at what the minister chose to tell us about it. There are all these particular references and rhetoric within this debate, like that it is ‘shovel ready’. I was a minister for five years. Most of those members making speeches would not have been further inside a department than the reception desk. I will tell you what ‘shovel ready’ means. It means identifying, as the AusLink program did over four or five years, an actual list of roadworks, in particular, and railway works that were going to be funded in due course. The list was published and people could argue about it if they thought it was wrong. But, of course, as a consequence, works commenced in the department. Even some of the state departments got their acts into gear. A common criticism in our party room during government from backbenchers was the fact they fought bitterly to get Commonwealth funding for a road project and it would not happen, as the member for Berowra frequently pointed out, simply because the state authorities either did not like the idea or just had not got their act together and done it. ‘Shovel ready’ is a significant part of the process.

Throughout its tenure the Gallop-Carpenter government refused to do an upgrade of the Great Eastern Highway from Kooyong Road to the Tonkin Highway in Perth. It is only three or four blocks, but it is the road to Perth Airport and it is a monster. It is really not the responsibility of Australian taxpayers. Furthermore, the response of the minister, Alana MacTiernan, to this was, ‘The airport out there is a federal facility; therefore, it is the federal government’s job to maintain a major highway.’ I might add that it is the road to the eastern states as it leaves the metropolitan area. The Great Eastern Highway goes up through Kalgoorlie et cetera.

I just want to close on this point when it comes to funding and the blame game: taxation reform required a VAT/GST. It required it. The sales tax system was dead on its feet. There was every reason why it could not continue as a mechanism of tax management. And so the Howard government bit the bullet on that. But in so doing it said, ‘When the money is collected, every cent’—with no administrative fees or bleeding off to state treasuries practiced on every federal grant—’will go to the states, and their share will be determined by the federal Grants Commission under the available state-Commonwealth funding formula.’

We took a belting. For a start, it was voted against by the Beazley opposition. They saw the political opportunity of saying ‘just another tax’. I might add to a few marginal seat holders on the other side: wait until that issue is debated in the context of the emissions trading scheme—just another tax. The fact of life is that they opposed it and we lost 15 seats, I think, in delivery. I well remember the then Prime Minister John Howard saying, ‘We have to do this; we have to provide a revenue stream for the states, a growth tax that provided them the capacity to provide for roads, for state rail, for health, for education and for law and order.’ They got the money. Is anybody sitting in this place at the moment prepared to say that all of those areas of their responsibility are now bright and shining, notwithstanding a very significant increase in the amount of money that was delivered? So when do you make the difference?

Finally, I noted with great interest in the Bills Digest just how much of this money—nearly $4.5 billion—is going to passenger rail, and I think the member for Isaacs thought that was a good idea. I can tell you something about passenger rail: it will be an ongoing cost to the Australian community forever, outside of the borrowing costs and, more particularly, so will social housing. I thought we had worked that out. You paid rent subsidies and you let people go to the private sector to look after those things without ongoing costs. Now we are going to get 20,000 houses. (Time expired)

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