Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting to see that all the Labor members have been told they can speak for only five minutes on what is supposed to be one of the great programs of this government. The garrulous member for Oxley must have been hugely disappointed that he was allowed to speak for only five minutes. I note he is leaving the chamber now.

Last week in this place I heard the member for Longman quoting Shakespeare—Julius Caesar, I believe. I did not think it was particularly relevant, except perhaps the words ‘in shallows and in miseries’, which brought to mind the current government’s administration. However, in considering this Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009 and the name changes and the rebadging that it brings, I am also tempted to quote Shakespeare, this time from Romeo and Juliet: ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. The meaning of that is that what matters is what something is, not what it is called. There is no doubt that the AusLink program was a very successful Howard government initiative. It has been associated with the Howard government and it is no strangeness to me at all that this government is trying to get rid of a badge that was very closely linked to the Howard government. They are bringing in this legislation and are hoping to get it passed on the basis that they want to get rid of any reference to the name AusLink because of its success and its connection with the Howard government.

That is the case with this bill—it does not matter what you call it and what spin you put on it; this is fundamentally Labor seeking to rebadge a successful Howard government national transport program and, in so doing, attempting to fool the Australian people that they are actually spending more when in fact they are spending less. I will come to that later. In the early days of my term as the member for Barker I was very vocal about the inequity in the local roads funding formula for South Australia. In fact, my first speech after my maiden speech was about the need for improved road infrastructure in rural areas. I certainly have continued to speak on that matter wherever I am because it is a very important issue in my electorate of Barker.

This bill changes the name of the AusLink program. AusLink offered a single funding regime and a defined national network of important road and rail infrastructure links and their intermodal connections. It had a range of funding categories, the three of particular importance to my electorate being Roads to Recovery, black spots and the Strategic Regional Program. I can certainly vouch for the fact that the electorate of Barker received more funding from those areas than any other electorate in South Australia.

The Howard government’s Roads to Recovery program became an essential element in local government’s ability to maintain and upgrade the local roads network. The Howard government established the Roads to Recovery program in 2000, and in July 2005 the program became part of AusLink. AusLink was a successful program under the Howard government and the funding initially was $2.24 billion including $304 million for Roads to Recovery. It was an outstanding example of a partnership between the national and local governments to provide direct funding to local communities. It bypassed the state governments so we did not have the cost shiftings. It was particularly important in my electorate of Barker, where we have thousands of kilometres in rural roads.

In rural areas it is the local roads which link our homes and farm properties to our schools, shops and sporting facilities that take us to the arterial roads and national highways. In regional areas in my electorate they also link entire communities. Roads to Recovery had a strong rural and regional focus and the funding helped local councils begin to address the backlog of regional and rural road maintenance, thereby improving safety, transport efficiency and stimulating economic development across the country. I was particularly pleased that the budget in 2005, when we gave over $1 billion to the Roads to Recovery program, included an additional $26.3 million specifically for councils in the Barker electorate.

AusLink Roads to Recovery has been a great program for all the roads in local government areas in this country and it has certainly helped their funding for roads. In fact in South Australia we got the best deal of the lot, probably because we were not getting such a good deal in other areas, but we argued that we should certainly get a greater share than other states. Our funding increased by 118 per cent for every council in South Australia whereas the Australian average was about 70 per cent, which in any terms was still a very substantial increase in funding for roads.

I was in local government for 11 years before coming to this place and when I talked to my local council people they were very thankful for the Roads to Recovery program. In fact they often expressed it in terms such as, ‘It was a godsend for our council. It actually meant we could fix up our roads and build new ones.’ Local councils in my electorate regularly told me that the program made an enormous difference in reducing the backlog of necessary maintenance whilst creating more jobs, provided safer travelling and reduced costs to local businesses.

The $205 million we gained for the Sturt Highway, which leads up to the Riverland in my electorate and is also the main highway to Sydney from Adelaide, certainly made it significantly safer as well as reducing travelling time for the thousands of vehicles that use it daily. The Dukes Highway was another major improvement where we funded over 30 overtaking lanes built onto the road to address a horrific crash rate, thereby increasing traffic volumes, particularly the number of commercial and heavy freight vehicles using the road as it is the main road link from Melbourne to Adelaide. Other improvements have included shoulder sealing over the full length of the Dukes Highway and major reconstruction of the section between Bordertown and the border. I was able to get a grant of $15 million to spend on 17 kilometres of road from Bordertown to the Victorian border because that road infrastructure had deteriorated quite badly.

Regional roads funding was a priority under the Howard government which recognised that transport and regional service are integral to the economic wellbeing of Australia. I might make the comment that when the road was in bad condition, the state government, rightly, reduced the speed limit from 110 to 100 kilometres an hour. I agreed with that. But when the road was fixed and it became the best part of the Dukes Highway in South Australia they kept the speed limit at 100, whereas the rest of the highway was 110. And guess where the state government put their police patrols to try and pick up people speeding? On the only section of road on the Dukes Highway with a 100 kilometre an hour limit!

Examples of direct benefits to local government and local businesses and communities are many, including the upgrade of the Kadlie Bore Road at Tailem Bend so it could accept B-double vehicles, which are very important to the transport and agriculture industries, and its widening to accommodate trailers behind prime movers. In Robe we resurfaced Boatswains Road to service local and tourist traffic needs. The reconstruction of the Canunda Frontage Road in Wattle Range facilitated tourism in our south-east. The extension of Stirling Road in the Tatiara provided a better strategic freight route linking the Dukes and Riddoch highways. Indeed, I use that road myself quite a bit.

The Black Spot Program in regions was always a priority under the Howard government’s Roads to Recovery. Federal Labor flip-flopped on the importance of the black spot funding over the years. Despite clear evidence of the lives saved and the crashes avoided, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments actually abolished this program. It took the coalition’s return to government in 1996 to reinstate the highly valuable program and fund it at an appropriate level. That allowed a large number of black spots in my electorate of Barker to be fixed, despite the failure of the state Labor government to meet its own infrastructure responsibility. In fact the Black Spot Program has been so well recognised that our state governments and I suspect other state governments have copied it—even using the same name. It shows the necessity of the funding.

It was a Black Spot Program that installed 4.5 kilometres of guardrails for hazardous embankment drop-offs along the Angaston to Loxton road. Shoulder sealing and edge lining along the Mount Pleasant to Walker Flat road made the road considerably safer. The installation of a staggered cross intersection at the Carpenter Rocks Road, Dickson Road and Burrungule Road intersection in the lower south-east are many other examples. Importantly they are local roads and they are very important to the safety of local residents and rural and regional communities, which have already suffered under Labor slashing years of numerous rural and regional programs.

This bill moves the Black Spot Program away from local roads and streets and allows the Rudd Labor government to direct it instead to the national highway system, which already has substantial funding. Importantly, AusLink separately earmarked funding for local and regional transport improvements and, sadly, that is lost in the bill before us. This bill removes the requirement for the minister to consider the regional consequences of projects and, in doing so, it takes away protection for rural industries and the rural infrastructure needed to support them. In reality, this will mean less funds being spent in regional areas—a Labor trait that is becoming all too evident. This will come back to haunt Labor members in rural areas who have been as quiet as a church mouse on this reduction in spending on rural areas. Where are the Labor members for Leichhardt, Capricornia, Dawson, Flynn and Forde in Queensland, for example? Where are the Labor members for Page, Richmond, Dobell and Macquarie in New South Wales? Where are the Labor members for Corangamite and Corio in Victoria? Why do all these Labor members in rural areas let road funding be reduced by a citycentric Labor government?

When you take road funds away from regional Australia, you take away safety. You take away the ability for people to go safely about their business and to transport their families to school and sporting facilities many kilometres away. A child sitting next to mum or dad in a car being driven from the family farm to Saturday morning school, 40 or 50 kilometres away, has as much right to road transport safety as does any city child. The Black Spot Program saves lives, as it prevents serious accidents by upgrading serious accident sites, and rural and regional families should not be denied that protection because Labor decide to change the nature of the program so that moneys will go to just a few projects on the national highway system. The strategic regional program supported the growth of regional industry and enabled major infrastructure such as the $3.1 million project for the Millicent heavy-vehicle bypass—and I was down there recently seeing the work being done on that very important bypass.

This bill permits the strategic regional component funding of AusLink to go to fund projects in non-regional locations. It will shift funds from regional areas to the cities, and that is to the direct disadvantage of rural and regional Australians. The Rudd Labor government have now decided to subsume all of the components of AusLink into the Nation Building Program. I said earlier that this was an attempt by Labor to fool the Australian people that they are spending more. A quick look at the figures shows that in fact they are spending less. Land transport infrastructure funding in 2009-10 will actually be about $2 billion less than in 2008-09. Many of the new infrastructure projects are simply re-announcements of projects proposed by the Howard government. Unfortunately, none of these are in the electorate of Barker.

The O-Bahn extension, which was not recommended for funding by Infrastructure Australia and was not a priority of the state Labor government, might be good news for city dwellers in Adelaide even if they want it—and there is still considerable argument about where it would go—and the modernisation of the Gawler railway line will be good news for the residents of the Labor seat of Wakefield, and likewise the Noarlunga-to-Seaford rail line extension will give the member for Kingston something to crow about. Unfortunately, the funds would have been better spent on the Southern Expressway, which must be the only one-way expressway in Australia. It runs one way for part of the day and then runs the other way for the rest of the day. Just to confuse things even more, on weekends it changes around again so you never know whether you are coming or going on the Southern Expressway, although some barriers are put in place to ensure that you do not go down the wrong way at the wrong time. So the funds would certainly have been better spent on that road infrastructure. None of these projects will reach the electorate of Barker or anywhere near it. They will do nothing for the heavy-vehicle drivers transporting fresh produce from the Riverland to city markets. They will do nothing for the heavy-transport industry in the south-east of South Australia. Wineries in the Barossa will not get more passing lanes to facilitate bringing their goods to Adelaide, just as I am pretty sure their hundreds of thousands of cartons of the good drop will not get a seat on the modernised Gawler-to-Adelaide railway. Regional infrastructure is as essential to Australia’s economy as its metropolitan infrastructure—not so under a Labor government which has again turned its back on rural and regional Australia.

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