Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A very sage ruling, if I might say so, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank you for the call. I want to assure the member for Paterson that if it is necessary I will be happy to extend the time to allow him to speak, because I have no doubt that he will be rising to congratulate the government on the additional expenditure of funds on the Pacific Highway, which of course runs through his electorate, and equally, no doubt, he will be rising to express his concern that the Premier of New South Wales is now baulking at the Commonwealth's offer.

This is very much a discussion about the budget, and I would like to start by congratulating the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the broader cabinet, including, of course, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, on what is a very, very good document. For me as the member for Hunter there are three key focuses. The first is the commitment to very quickly returning the Commonwealth's finances to the black. That is so important for inflation and therefore interest rates and, of course, keeping pressure off families at a time when there are very real cost-of-living pressures. The second is making sure that all Australians share in the bounty which will flow from the mining boom mark 2, and that certainly will be the case in my electorate as a result of the redistribution of funds which will flow from the minerals resource rent tax.

The third—and one and the same—is ensuring that, with unemployment below five per cent now, we take this opportunity to get people who have been on welfare for too long back into the labour market and therefore back into the workforce. We will do that in two ways, with a carrot and a stick. The carrot is investing in those who need a leg up to do so in basic skills and beyond in education and training. The stick is making sure that those who are capable of working do so. That is important for the economy because we are going up against capacity constraints, and it is very, very good for our social cohesion. There are those who just need some encouragement; there are those who need a good push. I am determined that we implement those policies and that they are given both aspects of that equation.

More specifically, this discussion is about two things. It is about COAG and the cooperation we need between the Commonwealth and the states and—not surprisingly, given that it was sponsored by the member for Lyne—it is about the Pacific Highway. I do not want to say too much about the Pacific Highway—those who have spoken before me have done so thoroughly; in particular, there was a very good presentation from the member for Lyne and from the transport minister—except to say that I know it very, very well. It is of course part of the Hunter region. I was born in Bellingen, where my maternal grandparents lived, so I spent half a lifetime driving or being driven on the old Pacific Highway, as dangerous and as slow as it was. I know the renewed Pacific Highway, thus far at least. It is a huge improvement, and I know we all collectively welcome it.

I want to go back to cooperation because it is just so important, as others have said, in taking the country forward. What is of real concern to me and should be of real concern to everyone in this place is the increasing propensity, I think, of the states to look to the Commonwealth to fund just about everything. It started under the Howard government. I have to acknowledge that the Commonwealth started to take greater responsibility for big projects, strategic projects, important projects, which the states—largely due to the reality of vertical fiscal imbalance—were losing the capacity to fund. It was a good move by the Howard government, and it is an initiative which has been very much built upon by the now Labor government. In fact, of course, we have been investing much more in these areas of infrastructure than did the Howard government.

But it really concerns me that this is causing a sort of shift in the psychology of state governments. Because we have been spending so much money, they seem to now believe that we have a responsibility to do all. I had an experience of this earlier in the week when the new member for Maitland, Robyn Parker—a good woman; I look forward to working with her—responded to the Mayor of Maitland, who was complaining about a section of the New England Highway between Maitland and Lochinvar, in my electorate, which is single carriageway only. The mayor was calling for something to be done. Robyn Parker was quick to the mark to say, 'Yes, the Commonwealth needs to do something about this.' As I pointed out in the Maitland Mercury, the government has spent $1.7 billion on a thing called the Hunter Expressway to effectively bypass that section of road. I think it is reasonable to expect that, given that we have invested some $1.7 billion, the state government might start thinking about taking some responsibility for some of these projects.

Indeed, the member for Paterson got involved in this debate himself. I noticed that after budget night he was so happy, obviously, with what had been invested in his own electorate—no doubt in particular the Pacific Highway—that he thought he would go shopping in my electorate to make the only comment he was prepared to make on infrastructure spending. In doing so, he expressed disappointment that we had not funded the Maitland bypass. I suppose I have to be a bit careful because the member for Paterson is speaking next and he will have right of reply, but there is no Maitland bypass, and that takes me to my next point. The Commonwealth, willing as it might be, cannot fund projects that do not exist, Member for Paterson. There is no planning or design for a Maitland bypass. I get lobbied—

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