Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013. Quite contrary to the contribution from the member for Wills, which we have just heard, and unlike those opposite in the previous government, the current government is focused on trying to improve transparency and accountability in terms of how we spend scarce taxpayer dollars. The entire purpose of this bill is to seek to establish Infrastructure Australia as the advisory body to governments, investors and infrastructure owners on a wide range of issues. These include, but are not limited to, Australia's current and future infrastructure needs; the mechanisms for financing infrastructure investments; policy, pricing and regulation, and their impacts on investment; and the efficiency of the delivery, operation and use of national infrastructure networks. The bill seeks to strengthen the role of Infrastructure Australia as an independent, transparent and expert advisory body through a change in its governance structure and through better clarification of its functions.

The bill will re-establish Infrastructure Australia as a separate entity under the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997, and will provide for an independent governing entity that is both legally and financially separate from the Commonwealth. The bill will more clearly define the functions of Infrastructure Australia. A better definition of Infrastructure Australia's functions and deliverables will assist in improving infrastructure planning and prioritisation on a national basis, thereby providing a more transparent, robust, evidence based approach to allocating scarce public funds to projects with the highest yield in productivity returns. This is important because we regularly hear, in this place, discussions about productivity. The ease and capacity of people to travel to and from work, or for transport companies to move freight around our cities or across the country, is vitally important. That is one of the key productivity drivers to our economy.

Infrastructure is only useful for productivity gains once it is completed. So it is important that infrastructure is completed in a timely and cost-effective manner that is affordable to federal, state and local budgets, so that those productivity gains can be realised sooner rather than later.

The Deputy Prime Minister, in his second reading speech, outlined the actions to fast track delivery of the iconic inland rail project—a project for inland rail from Melbourne to Brisbane to create another freight route to take truck traffic off our highways and to provide rail connectivity through some of our most productive agricultural regions. This rail line will link into Sydney as well as into other key towns along the way. In my discussions with a number of logistics providers I found that they are looking forward to these nation-building infrastructure projects to improve the transport and cost efficiency of our freight networks around the country.

A high-level implementation group will be chaired by the Hon. John Anderson, former Australian minister for transport and former Deputy Prime Minister. The implementation group will report directly to the Deputy Prime Minister and its first priority will be to settle on an alignment and to reserve land for the route. The group will examine financing options and engage with the private sector and those with significant interests in and benefits from construction. As I said, I have already spoken with a number of transport and logistics groups in my electorate of Forde about the capacity to use this freight line to improve the delivery of freight both into and out of some of our major industrial areas.

The coalition will work with state governments on this particular project, but we will work with state governments on other projects. During the election campaign, we announced some $6.7 billion to commence works on upgrading the Bruce Highway in the state of Queensland and another $1 billion to continue the Gateway Motorway upgrade on the northern side of Brisbane. I know, having travelled that part of the Gateway to visit my father-in-law, that you want to pick the right time of day to use it, otherwise you will be sitting in traffic for a significant period of time. There are many other infrastructure projects around the country which are designed to help local communities benefit from this forward planning—because we are going to be a government that builds things and focuses on the infrastructure that allows us to grow and develop the productive capacity of this country.

There are some local issues in the electorate of Forde around infrastructure that I would also like to take this opportunity to touch on. There are infrastructure projects such as the M1 from Loganholme to Daisy Hill. This was first looked at under the Howard government and there was a commitment from the former Howard government of some $500 million per annum over a 10-year period to complete this piece of infrastructure. Over the last six years we did not see any funding from the previous Labor government and, due to the budget conditions that we have inherited as a government, we have not been able to allocate the funding at this point in time, but I will continue to speak with my colleagues and the Deputy Prime Minister about how we can look at starting to fund this key infrastructure project. As a result of the community being ignored by the previous Labor government, this is now a significant bottleneck during peak hours, both in the morning and in the afternoon.

We also need to plan for the future public transport needs of the residents of the western part of Forde. We already have a rail line there, the interstate rail line. During the previous term of government I invited the now Deputy Prime Minister to visit the western part of the electorate to look at how we can utilise the rail corridor that already exists and expand it to carry a passenger service that will cater for the rapidly expanding residential estates, not only within the Forde electorate but also in the neighbouring electorate of Wright—namely, the estates of Yarrabilba and Flagstone, which over the next 30 years expect to have approximately another 200,000 people living in them, with a very significant lack of public transport infrastructure to support such a large growth in population.

Infrastructure Australia does a tremendous job when it works with the government to develop Australia's infrastructure requirements. This bill is a reflection of this government's desire to continue to give official bodies the capacity to provide sound advice to government better and more efficiently, in the context of our overall objective to reduce red tape and regulation and to make sure that we use taxpayers' funds wisely. One issue that has led to this, in our view, is that the current governance structure of Infrastructure Australia inhibits its independence. We want it to be a robust, independent organisation that can provide us good, sound, quality advice so the decisions we make on how we spend taxpayers' dollars are well considered and thought through. The direct line of reporting between the Infrastructure Coordinator and the minister places significant power in the position of the Infrastructure Coordinator rather than the infrastructure council.

Infrastructure Australia has not been successful in fundamentally changing the way projects are identified as national priorities. In particular, whilst it delivers priority project lists, the projects are derived from state and territory government project proposals and the prioritisation is based on the extent to which the project business case is advanced, rather than the extent to which projects will contribute to improved national productivity.

The government are committed to delivering on a broad infrastructure reform agenda, improving productivity and driving economic growth. We believe these reforms will be critical to delivering this agenda. The government in this space will seek ensure a seamless transition to the new independent governing entity through the amendment in the bill. We will ensure that the new board, the chief executive, the staff and the relevant financial appropriations are in place to commence the new body. The current structure of Infrastructure Australia, as I said at the outset, does not provide the flexibility that is required to achieve these outcomes.

What we seek to achieve with Infrastructure Australia is a broadening of their skills, so they can undertake new five-yearly evidence based audits of our infrastructure asset base; develop those top-down priority lists at national and state levels; develop a 15-year infrastructure plan, which gives us some vision and direction for the future; evaluate both economic and social infrastructure proposals; and publish the justification for prioritisation, including a cost-benefit analysis. This will be for projects worth over $100 million seeking Commonwealth funding, excluding defence projects. Regularly publishing a cost-benefit analysis is one thing that Labor has consistently failed to do in any meaningful way across any number of projects, whether it be the NBN, pink batts—all manner of areas.

In closing, together these measures will enhance Infrastructure Australia's ability to provide the best possible advice to government on infrastructure matters. This will allow us as a government to ensure that taxpayers' dollars are spent wisely on projects that are going to aid economic growth, improve productivity and the future wealth of this country.

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