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

Listening to the debate today on the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013 and reading the second reading speech of the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development has been very interesting. You see quite a Stalinist or totalitarian use of language where you actually use words that mean the direct opposite of what you are saying. We are talking here about Infrastructure Australia, a very admirable institution, set up under the Labor government, an institution that, apparently, 'We are going to make more transparent.' How are we going to make it more transparent? By stopping any independence on that body in terms of the publication of their reports or assessments of infrastructure.

At the very heart of this notion of Infrastructure Australia was the idea that we would get a group of people—and we got very senior people from business, academia, even persons from the blue team—with political experience to sit on this body and to provide fearless and sound assessments of the various infrastructure projects that the government had to prioritise. A key part of that process was the publication of their assessments. We are now going to change that so that the minister actually controls whether or not those assessments are indeed published.

The fundamental driver of this legislation, which is the independent publication of these reports, has now been changed. So rather than getting greater transparency, a very great part of this legislation is in fact designed to subtly reduce that transparency and independence. I think it will impact on our ability to get people of the same quality whom we have had in the past on that body. That ability to be independent and to be sure that the work and effort you put into that task would, at least, be rewarded by a frank publication of your assessment has now been undermined by these changes. You cannot blame us for being somewhat cynical, when those of us who have lived through the Howard years saw that then ministers for transport were, almost invariably, wheat farmers—not that I have got anything against wheat farmers, but that should not be the only occupational qualification required to be a coalition transport minister.

Under that administration we had what was officially called 'Roads of National Importance' but of course we knew that they were not RONIs; they were RONPIs, 'Roads of National Party Importance.' I find it extraordinary that we talk about pork-barrelling under Labor, when we had, as I said, these 'Roads of National Party Importance.' They probably did not go to the lengths that their state equivalents did. For example, when a National Party transport minister came into office and found that Main Roads was just about to publish a journal listing and prioritising all the roads in the area where he lived and that the road that he wanted to go to his farm was not included, he then had all the documents shredded in secret—fortunately, some good person reserved one document, which made its way into my hands—and reissued that with a total reprioritisation which, surprise, surprise, turned the road past his farm from being a very low priority to being a very high priority! I do think members opposite should be a bit understanding of our cynicism.

Interestingly, we are now going to be engaging in infrastructure development that is related to productivity. Can I tell you about some of the difficulties I had as a state transport minister in trying to get the Howard government and the wheat farmers interested in the roads into the Pilbara? They produced a national transport plan which, as I have said in this House before, had one road west and one road north. It did not include those major centres of national production—that is, Karratha and Port Hedland. Indeed, we struggled. Time and time again, we approached them and said: 'We need money to duplicate the Dampier highway into Karratha; we need money to totally revise the road network into Port Hedland.' Notwithstanding the fact that they are probably the biggest generators of export income in this nation, those roads could not compete with the roads you need to get to the wheat farms to get funding.

As I have said before in this place, it was Martin Ferguson as the then shadow minister who made the commitment that, if Labor were elected federally in 2007, the federal government would contribute to the development of those roads. It was the right and proper thing to do. I am very pleased to say that the member for Grayndler was the one who delivered on that promise. It was not hard to get productivity on a heavy-haulage road into Port Hedland and a heavy-haulage road into Karratha.

I have noticed a theme coming from a number of members—and I have noticed that people do not listen to each other's speeches, generally. The implication is that they are justifying this bizarre decision to think strategically and holistically, but somehow or other we are not going to think about passenger rail when we are thinking holistically or strategically about the city. They seem to be implying: 'That's because we're talking about productivity.' As I have said here before, you cannot talk about productivity in Australia without talking about productivity in our cities. Eighty per cent of our GDP is developed and produced in our cities. The ability for those cities to deliver that productivity is underpinned by the need for mobility. It is a great tragedy that time and time again we see the Liberal Party surrender the Transport portfolio to the National Party, where the focus is very much on freight roads and rural roads to the exclusion of the city, but there is no desire or belief that there should in fact be an urban policy. Eighty per cent of Australians live in large cities of more than 100,000. In Western Australia—

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