Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion regarding urban public transport projects. I think this has been a very interesting debate, and I commend the member for Throsby for bringing this on. We have heard here today, from the member for Aston and from the member for Bennelong, a very clear demonstration of what the problem is. They say, 'No, this is not going to be our priority because a federal coalition government is going to invest in economic infrastructure.' And they say, 'We're going to invest in infrastructure that is going to add to our productivity.' Therein lies the very profound problem that we have with our Prime Minister and with the direction in which he has set this government: a complete and utter failure to understand the nature of cities or to understand the very profound link between productivity and cities, and the need for that productivity of cities to be enhanced and preserved through the provision of mobility. Cities are the drivers of our economic growth. Over and over again, all of the economic data is showing that we need large cities to drive this economic growth. This is where we bring together the specialisation of skills and the diversity of skills—so we get those skill sets together, available to create industry, innovation and enterprise.

This has been totally misunderstood by the present government. Very interestingly, earlier this year I was invited to participate in a national conference run by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute on national urban policy. That conference asked about the role of policy and teased out all those very important issues about productivities and cities. The coalition sent Scott Morrison, now the Minister for Immigration, who spoke about immigration policy. He spoke mainly about refugee policy, and he said absolutely nothing about urban policy. When he was asked: 'Look, this is a conference on urban policy; where is your urban policy? What are the elements of your urban policy?' The response was, 'Well, we don't have one; we leave that stuff to the states.' We had the member for Bennelong saying, a few minutes ago, that we need to get our cities organised; we need to look at densification; we have to be very productive and we only have to invest in productivity. These are the critical productivity issues of our time. These guys on the benches opposite see public transport as welfare stuff. They think it has nothing to do with productivity. It has absolutely everything to do with productivity!

Indeed, it has been very interesting that in Perth recently the RAC did a survey of businesses across Perth, and 82 per cent of those businesses said that the increasing road congestion in Perth is having a major impact on their productivity. It also found that 74 per cent of businesses believed it was affecting their ability to attract staff, to get them to work on time and to work productively. These are major productivity issues. They do need investment. In Perth we are growing rapidly and generating income for the nation. As I have said before, we are only getting some 40 cents back in the GST dollar. We are making a major contribution across the state, and the majority of people who work in the mining industry are living in Perth. They need to get around. We need this infrastructure. The state Liberal government has said that they are unable to do this by themselves and they made pledges at the last election to build a rail line to the airport and to build a light rail system. Federal Labor promised $500 million to help them get one of those projects across the line. But now that is not going to happen. There will be no federal government assistance to the state government, and therefore the state government has made it clear that it will not be following through on those projects. (Time expired)

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