Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009. This bill will simply rename and rebadge the coalition government’s very successful AusLink road funding program and name it the ‘Nation Building Program’—once again, a demonstration of the spin used by this government to create the erroneous impression that nation-building initiatives and policies are new. Clearly, they are not new, as the Australian people well know. This government inherited the very successful AusLink program established by the coalition government. The name change was announced at the special Council of Australian Governments meeting on 5 February 2009.

The previous coalition government had a long history of funding state road expenditure, whether it was for national highways as identified under AusLink or local, rural and regional roads under the Roads to Recovery program. The coalition government introduced AusLink, which came into effect in the financial year 2004-05 and consisted of corridors of linked national highways and rail links. It was then extended to focus on rail, road and intermodal transport links to major city ports and airports. The program was further extended to include ports that were the final link in the export chain. The subsequent programs, such as Roads to Recovery and the Black Spot Program, were incorporated into AusLink. Then the strategic regional program was added. Finally, AusLink established a long-term mutimodal planning framework called the National Land Transport Plan, which was the basis for the investment in the national network.

The coalition government’s AusLink program was very successful because it recognised that councils in local government areas were best placed to directly identify and prioritise maintenance for local roads, whether it be uneven edges, fixing potholes from recent flooding, bridge repairs or grading, levelling or bituminising roads to ensure community safety. This work was funded under the Roads to Recovery program and Black Spot funding for identified accident sites. Initially these funds were directed to the various state governments—Labor state governments, I might add—to distribute to local shires. However, a proportion of these funds were reprioritised within the Labor state governments and distributed to metropolitan areas for other activities, not necessarily targeted at repairing roads. As a consequence the funds did not necessarily reach the local shires. When this became apparent, the coalition took the decision to direct this road funding straight to the local shires to ensure that their much-needed roadworks could be funded and the work completed in a timely manner, as identified by those in the local and regional communities.

Funding directed to land transport networks by this Labor government emanate from funds set aside from the previous coalition government’s surplus budget. The Australian people are well aware that this expenditure is only possible as a result of the coalition’s 10 years of responsible economic management, paying off Labor’s $96 billion debt as well as investing in productive infrastructure. Many of the Labor government’s infrastructure promises and funding announcements are actually previously announced projects funded from budget allocations under the previous coalition government. The Perth-Bunbury Highway is one example. I am pleased to inform the House that this highway is now called the Forrest Highway, named after Baron John Forrest, the first Premier of Western Australia. My electorate is also named after John Forrest. However, the previous government had announced the Perth-Bunbury Highway project, now the Forrest Highway project, and had allocated funding. Procrastination and obstruction by the then Labor state Minister for Planning and Infrastructure Alannah MacTiernan did not assist in expediting the actual construction. Notwithstanding previous announcements by the coalition government, and a start date of December 2006, the Labor government in their 2008-09 budget announcements claimed the project as their own and re-announced the previously allocated $160 million funding.

The bill also makes a number of changes to funding arrangements that apply to projects funded under the Nation Building Program. The amendments to section 71 of the AusLink (National Land Transport) Act 2005 allow sites that are on the National Land Transport Network to become eligible for black spot funding. Currently, that is not the case. Black Spot Program funding was always intended to be allocated for projects on local roads and streets.

This bill will also allow AusLink strategic regional projects—now termed the Nation Building Program—to fund non-regional projects. This government is continuously removing vital resources and critical funding from rural and regional Australia. Amendments in this bill will allow metropolitan areas access to Black Spot funding and the Strategic Regional Program funding that was previously quarantined for use on our vast networks of regional and rural roads. Another example of the government’s discrimination against regional Australia is the changes to the youth allowance affecting gap year students from regional areas, who will now not qualify for youth allowance when they have to move to study at metropolitan universities to continue their tertiary education.

The name change in this bill is a political one in nature. It is simply seeking to rebadge a successful coalition national transport program. It also seeks to mislead by creating the false impression that the Labor government is increasing spending on more new infrastructure programs than is actually happening. The bill moves the Black Spot Program away from local roads and streets to a competitive funding environment with the substantially national highway system. Changing the strategic regional component of AusLink to fund projects in non-regional locations completely alters the intent of AusLink funding and will shift even more federal funding from regional areas into the city areas. I am, therefore, opposed to the change to the Roads to Recovery program, the Black Spot Program and the strategic regional projects, as they alter the regional focus of these highly successful programs.

This decision ignores the fact that Auslink was a strategic regional program designed to assist regional local governments with building better transport networks to support industry, tourism and economic development. It was funding to foster partnerships between the federal government and regional Australia by providing funding to those worthwhile infrastructure related projects in areas not on the national land transport network. Given the productivity of the regions, this was a very important, on-the-ground delivery of funding in the areas which drive Australia’s export performance. It has only been the strong export performance of the agricultural sector that has kept Australia out of technical recession in recent months.

This product emanates from the region. This is the reason the dedicated regional productive infrastructure funding is needed through an Auslink program. Funding for such infrastructure related projects is vital to my regional Forrest electorate, and I strongly believe that regional shire councils should not have to compete with metropolitan areas for such funding. This will not provide a level playing field to compete with funds because high traffic volumes and numbers of votes in urban areas will subtract funds from those high-value freight areas on regional roads.

This also raises road safety issues for regional road users. I refer the House to an article by the RAC in Western Australia, dated 22 January 2008, in which it called for ‘a major cash injection’ on road infrastructure ‘after it was revealed there are nearly 1,000 kilometres of substandard highways in WA’. The RAC report identified ‘the state’s worst 10 sections of highway’. The majority of them were in the south-west of Western Australia.

The worst rated section of road was a 73km stretch of the South West Highway—

which was in my electorate before the boundary changes—

between Yornup, south of Bridgetown, to Shannon, south of Manjimup.

The other most-dangerous section of road was identified as ‘the Bussell Highway between Cowaramup and Margaret River—one of the major tourist routes in the south-west’. The roads were identified as inferior and dangerous, with crumbling or gravel edges, faded markings, poor lighting, short overtaking lanes, and overgrown vegetation and large trees causing roadside hazards. Continued maintenance of our south-west and regional roads is paramount for community safety. I do not support this bill in its removal of critical funding from regional Australia.

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