Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

We have more than doubled the federal roads budget to $27.7 billion over six years. We have also been engaged in reform, not just in investment. We established Infrastructure Australia to overhaul the way we plan, finance, build and use major infrastructure. We have commissioned the first national freight and national port strategies. We have delivered national laws, slashing regulators from the 24 which exist across the transport sector at the moment down to just three—single national regulators in maritime, in rail and in heavy vehicles. We have implemented new, fairer, heavy vehicle road user charges in consultation with industry and we have delivered them. The Infrastructure Working Group last week signed off on our program of completion of microeconomic reform. We have delivered strong, national PPPP guidelines. We have delivered streamlined approval processes for major projects. We have delivered best practice on project delivery. On 1 January 2011 we will deliver for the first time a national prequalification system which is about increasing competition in the sector so that drives down prices to governments and at the end of the day to consumers.

We have delivered alliance contracting reforms. The draft is currently out there. Consultation with industry will be delivered in 2011. And we have ended the exile from urban policy that occurred under the previous government. We will have strategic plans for all capital cities in place by 1 January 2012 as a condition of Commonwealth funding. So we have delivered record investment, we are delivering micro-economic reform to make sure that the productivity benefits flow through to the nation and, on top of that, we are delivering the single largest infrastructure investment, and the most important, in the National Broadband Network.

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