Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2009-2010 and cognate bills. These bills, along with the previous stimulus packages, are transforming my electorate and Australia. These bills have the DNA of Labor all over them.

Labor is the nation-building party. We always have been and we always will be. Labor is the party of job creation. We are the party that builds the infrastructure for the future. We are the party that has put in place great institutions that last. Labor is the party that makes the changes that stick—the changes that are untouchable and that become part of the character of the nation. Labor has instituted things like Medicare, the fair go, superannuation, a nationally run system of quality higher education institutions and the signing of the Kyoto treaty.

Labor has always been the party that makes the big changes that come to define the nation. We are the party that shows decisive leadership, and that is what these bills are all about. This budget and Labor’s decisive response to the international financial crisis now form an important part of Australia’s social and economic history. Through these bills the party is building an education revolution. Labor is undertaking the biggest school modernisation in this country’s history. Through these bills Labor is building a sustainable future for the next generation of Australians—a sustainable future for our kids.

Labor is making thousands of Australian homes more energy efficient and making our world a more environmentally friendly place. Through this bill and related bills we are rebuilding the levels of social housing that the Liberals tore down. We are providing secure housing for the less well off and the disadvantaged. We are investing in community recreational facilities, providing opportunities for communities to come together in healthy pursuits. Through these bills we are rebuilding entire regional transport systems, public and private, for passengers and freight. We are making roads safer and more efficient.  Through these bills Labor is investing massively in nation-building road and rail projects. We are improving our ports and we are linking up our rail, roads and ports into a complex matrix that will make our exports more competitive and will make commuting a safer, more efficient and less polluting experience for Australians. These initiatives are happening in my electorate and right across the nation.

I will make some comments now about what is happening in my own electorate of Corangamite, but first let us look at the magnitude of our national investment. Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, as you know, there are some truly massive investments in this budget. There will be a huge future investment of $12.7 billion into schools. And there will be nearly $4 billion to help improve the energy performance of Australian homes and reduce energy waste and greenhouse gas emissions. There will be $6 billion for the states and territories to fund construction of approximately 20,000 new social housing dwellings across the nation. These are the big building blocks that will make Australia a better place tomorrow.

Every child in every primary school today and in future generations will have the benefit of this budget. A child born today will walk into a primary school of unprecedented quality in six years time. My son, Isaac—not yet two—will have a great choice of schools to go to in large part because of these bills and their investment. Isaac will have better schooling choices than I think previous generations have had, and I am very proud of that. But I am just as proud of something else. I am proud not just of the lasting investment we are making in infrastructure for the future but also of the immediate impact of these bills, which will be the creation of jobs. The immediate effect of these bills will be to provide work for thousands of builders, tradespeople, retailers and Australian manufacturers who would otherwise have been thrown out of work due to the current global financial crisis. Thousands of electricians, thousands of plumbers, thousands of carpenters, kitchen manufacturers, plasters, painters and, importantly, apprentices will get work through these bills.

Through these bills we are saving thousands of Australian jobs. It has been calculated that there will be approximately 200,000 jobs as a consequence of the 35,000 projects that federal Labor is investing in. I want to make this point, which I think is important. It addresses the opposition’s cheap, opportunistic response to what Labor is doing. Let us look at the Liberal Party’s logic: ‘Do not invest in infrastructure for the future. Allow unemployment to rise. Pay out more people on the dole. The market will fix it.’ I find that proposition ludicrous. At the end of the Liberals’ economic strategy are longer unemployment queues, higher dole payments, no infrastructure and, of course, debt. Theirs is a debt strategy without infrastructure, and that leads to the demoralisation of families and workers. It makes no sense. It makes a huge amount of sense to invest in infrastructure—creating jobs today and leaving a lasting legacy.

I would now like to spend a bit of time talking about the practical effects of this budget and the government’s associated economic strategy in my own electorate and my own region. As I said at the start, Corangamite and the greater Geelong region are being transformed by this budget and the Rudd government’s economic strategy. Let us go through some of those impacts. Right now the bricks, mortar, tarmac, railway sleepers, wooden trusses, bearers and joists are being laid to open up my region to the world, to create a better city and a whole new region. As part of this budget and our decisive stimulus plan, we are building a whole new transport system, more connected towns, better schools and a healthier, more liveable environment. Never in our 200 years of recent colonial history has the greater Geelong region seen such investment on this scale in infrastructure.

Importantly, these are not one-off infrastructure investments in isolation. A strategic linking of investments is the result of years of thinking by local business, political and community leaders. We are backing that vision with this budget. The vision is being significantly driven by federal and state government road and transport commitments of around $4 billion. Funding is committed to all of the Geelong Ring Road, and this massive transport project is now nearing completion. The Geelong Ring Road will link seamlessly onto a duplicated Princes Highway through to the Surf Coast and through to Colac once the project is funded—again on a duplicated Princes Highway. A $50 million investment to upgrade rail links to the port of Geelong will connect our rail system to the major export facilities in western Victoria, which will make our region much more competitive—competing, of course, with other parts of the economy. While this has until recently been a primary producers’ export destination, this port can play a significant strategic role within the Victorian context.

Opportunities both for commuters on public transport and for rail freight will also greatly be expanded with a new $3.2 billion Geelong to Melbourne fast-rail link. We are investing in important arterial roads like the Colac Lavers Hill Road and other roads under the Roads to Recovery program as well as addressing several dangerous black spot rail crossings throughout my electorate. All of these transport infrastructure initiatives will subsequently improve car and rail usage across the City of Geelong, increase road transport efficiency and reduce commuting times for all. With reduced costs and more efficient transport, new businesses, industries and jobs will come to Geelong, with people following.

Social infrastructure is also being completely modernised, with hundreds of millions of dollars being ploughed into my region. Every school in our region is being upgraded as a consequence of these appropriation bills. New community and regional-level recreational facilities are being planned for Torquay, Bannockburn, Geelong and Armstrong Creek, and the borough of Queenscliff gets new recreational facilities as well. Bannockburn is getting a new $2 million sport and recreational facility and a community hub. Torquay gets $4 million for sports facilities for football, soccer, cricket and netball. Torquay is also getting an upgraded senior citizens centre and community house. The Grovedale, Waurn Ponds and Belmont communities get a new state-of-the-art water recreation facility via the new Leisurelink centre. Colac has its pool precinct upgraded and improvements to the botanic gardens are taking place, with new tourism infrastructure in the Otways and down through Apollo Bay. There is a new GP superclinic funded for Belmont. The Great Ocean Road Renewal Program has been funded, to the tune of $1 million, to attack weeds, assess the impacts of climate change and protect Indigenous cultural sites along the Great Ocean Road. As I said earlier, the social infrastructure in our region is being renewed via this budget. That is of course all creating jobs. The Geelong region is being transformed in a way that few thought possible a few years ago. This is the mark of the commitment of federal and state governments to regional Australia and a continuation of the historic fact that Labor is the nation-building party. I commend these bills to the House.

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