Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the aspects of these appropriation bills that relate to my portfolio responsibilities. Indeed, the majority of the funds allocated in these bills are for the government’s nation-building activities. In particular, our East Kimberley development package makes up the biggest tranche of funding—almost $115 million. My colleague the member for Brand, the Parliamentary Secretary for Western and Northern Australia, will no doubt speak on that a little bit later in the debate.

The bill also allocates funding for some smaller but especially important features of the government’s Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. In particular this bill sets aside $12½ million towards our $25 million local government reform fund. There are also funds set aside for the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program.

Over the past two years the Rudd government and local governments have embarked on a substantially new partnership. Indeed, our support for local government is unprecedented. Overall, more than $1 billion is going directly to councils under the RLCIP. We know the effects of this funding, combined with the Rudd government’s broader stimulus measures: we have kept local economies right across the country ticking over during the global economic recession. We have kept Australians working, supporting jobs today while building the infrastructure of tomorrow. Councils, their residents and ratepayers have been the overwhelming beneficiaries here. It is why we have national unemployment at 5½ per cent. It is an extraordinary achievement and speaks to the resilience and spectacular success of the government’s stimulus package.

I have to say that one of the great privileges of my role as parliamentary secretary over the last seven months or so has been the many visits I have made to communities to see the community infrastructure projects across the country in various stages of work or completion. As members know, there is a lot to see among the more than 3,300 community infrastructure projects spread across the country’s 565 local government entities. There are a lot of stories but I will share just one of those stories with this chamber—one story in 3,000 or so.

On a very nice Saturday in October last year I had the pleasure of going up to the Berowra Community Centre on Sydney’s northern outskirts. The centre is in a lovely bushland setting just off the Pacific Highway: a national road, I might add, where we are spending more than $2 billion over the next six years—an extraordinary investment. But there I was in Berowra, that particular Saturday morning in October last year to open a much smaller project, but a very important one. This was the new extension to the centre’s library and various other improvements.

The patrons of the community centre were just thrilled with the new foyer, the new layout, the carpet and the new system to display all the lovely community artworks. It was a very enjoyable morning. The member for Berowra was there to take part in the celebrations but, strangely enough, when it came time for the official photos he became unusually shy. Those of us in northern Sydney know that it is very unlike the member for Berowra to miss out on a photo opportunity. When I urged him to join us he begged off and said, ‘I know how these things can be misused.’ But, interestingly, my good friend Nick Berman, the Mayor of Hornsby, was not so bashful. He was happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with me under the Nation Building Program stimulus sign. He was holding his gorgeous young baby daughter, Kate. It was a lovely morning for everyone.

I want to make a point. I know that the member for Berowra may have been a little camera-shy that day but he knows there is much to praise in this project, most importantly the fact that 23 local tradesmen and suppliers were employed during the construction phase and that a further 15 were employed in the Berowra Community Centre renovations. Again, to come to the impact on employment, it means that unemployment in this particular part of Sydney is around 4.2 to 4.3 per cent, an extraordinary achievement. The member for Berowra with other members of the coalition may decry our stimulus projects in this place but, when it comes to actions in his own electorate and in the electorates of others, I think perhaps the member for Berowra is a secret admirer of the Rudd government’s stimulus.

Valentine’s Day is coming up; it is just around the corner. It is a time of year when secret admirers are known to put pen to paper, so I am going to make a plea to all the secret admirers of our stimulus package on the other side to put pen to paper. I think this is the big chance. Get your pens out, because I know that Minister Albanese, my esteemed colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Western and Northern Australia, Gary Gray, and I are going to check our in-trays over the next couple of weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day to see just how many are true to themselves. No letterhead will be necessary. I say to the members opposite: if you want to send me or Albo or Gary a stimulus Valentine, then go right ahead.

We know that the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program projects have been extremely important. It is a pity that not all members in this place can bring themselves to appreciate their critical importance. Last week I travelled to Western Australia and renewed my acquaintance with one conservative politician who has no qualms about praising our Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. I was in Perth to meet with the chairs and deputies of the Regional Development Australia network that we put together, with the Parliamentary Leader of the Nationals WA, Brendon Grylls. In contrast to his shy counterparts in this chamber, Mr Grylls appreciates the federal government’s enormous contribution to infrastructure and in particular to regional development—one fair dinkum conservative politician who will say publicly just how vital our stimulus has been, and I had to go to Western Australia to find him.

In fairness, I suppose there is not a very conducive climate in the opposition at the moment for free expression on these issues. After all, the opposition leader has been saying that he wants to slash our stimulus plan. This is the same stimulus plan that has kept the country working and has supported Australian jobs, small businesses and working families right across the country. It includes more than 28,000 nation-building infrastructure projects that are now under way, setting us up for future growth with major investments in rail, roads, ports, broadband, clean energy and, let us not forget, the largest school modernisation project in Australian history. But who knows what and where the opposition leader will cut if he gets his chance? Will it be new classrooms in Eastwood and Gladesville? Will it be the $3.25 million Hilton Community Precinct development in the City of Fremantle? That is going to transform a number of outdated buildings, provide a brand-new, first-class community hub and help otherwise disengaged young people in that area, many of them young Indigenous children.

I had the pleasure of visiting the future site of this much needed community infrastructure in Hilton last year. I was there with my colleague Melissa Parke. Is this project in jeopardy? Will the opposition leader cut the more than $16 million set for the Townsville CBD redevelopment project in the electorate of Herbert? That is going to recapture Flinders Street’s historic role as the high street of Townsville. Will the opposition leader take away the $4 million public library redevelopment project from the community of Campbelltown in Adelaide? Large projects or small projects? I think it is reasonable to say that there is climate of fear in the opposition. I am going to look with interest to see how many Liberal and National Party members are going to nominate particular infrastructure projects to be curtailed.

Local government, too, has much to fear from the opposition leader. Many of these projects that we are now funding have lain dormant on council books for some time, waiting for the partnership money from the Commonwealth that will allow them to be brought to fruition. The opposition leader needs to come clean on his plans on where he will cut back on stimulus and tell the Australian public what he will cut. Interestingly, we have had the shadow finance minister out there already musing aloud: perhaps cuts to schools, perhaps cuts to the Public Service. We await further pronouncements from the shadow finance minister.

With the investment that we have made—the money we have put into local government—comes the accompanying responsibility for councils to be accountable for the funding they receive from the federal government. Here there is need for reform, and we see the money for that in this appropriation legislation. The Local Government Reform Fund aims to improve the capability of local government to manage assets and financial planning processes as well as increase collaboration between councils to deliver services for their ratepayers. The fund will support proposals which build local government capacity. The sorts of projects we will be supporting are collaborative projects between groups of local governments—for example, to provide shared service delivery, workforce planning or joint purchasing.

Some councils have been doing this for many years, and they are the champions in this area. In Perth, again, the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council comprises councils from the cities of Melville, Rockingham and Cockburn and the towns of Kwinana and East Fremantle. These councils banded together some time ago to work on waste management. They voluntarily coordinated their waste recycling and resource recovery and are as a result delivering better services at a better price to their communities. The Local Government Reform Fund is designed to help these kinds of initiatives. It is complemented by the $8 million for the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government. This newly established centre, based at the University of Technology in Sydney, is working with local governments to promote best practice and to encourage innovation and professionalism within the sector. This federal support is an opportunity for local governments to ensure that they can keep acting in the best interests of their ratepayers, and it is an opportunity that I urge councils not to pass up.

As part of these bills we are also appropriating $18.3 million in direct payments to local government under the Roads to Recovery program. Councils can use the funding they receive from the program to make urgent repairs and to upgrade their local road networks. The funding is untied and can go towards the local priorities identified by local communities. Overall, the Rudd government has committed $1.7 billion to Australia’s councils and shires over the next five years under Roads to Recovery. It is record funding, and it will deliver more than 20,000 small-scale road projects in every part of the country across the next five years. There is also another $10 million in these bills, as I said, for our Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. As has been noted in previous debates, these additional appropriations are fully offset by savings against the original appropriations.

We are a fiscally responsible government, in both word and deed. The Rudd Labor government has been a good friend to local government. In my many engagements with mayors, deputies and council members across the country, this new partnership—this new level of collaboration—is indeed appreciated. I commend these bills to the House.

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