Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Nearly three months after this government came to office, one thing is very clear and we have seen it again today: they had a plan to get into government but they had no plan for government. They are all opposition and no ability to govern. Tony Abbott and his colleagues spent so much of their time in opposition being negative about the previous Labor government that they left no time to develop a plan for what they would do in office. Just about every single decision they have made in the past three months has involved the abolition of a Labor reform. This is a government characterised by what it opposes, not by what it proposes. It is a government dyed in negativity. It offers no policy alternatives.

When Labor was in government, I labelled the coalition the 'NOilition'. If you look at their first 100 days in power, absolutely nothing has changed. They are still the NOilition, a policy vacuum with no forward plan beyond the abolition of every last vestige of the previous Labor government. This is why Australians today are witnessing what is undoubtedly the worst transition to government from opposition in Australia's national political history. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of infrastructure, where the opposition want to trash Labor's independent, evidence based formula for nation building and return to the bad old days of shameless political interference and pork-barrelling dressed up as policy.

We are moving this matter of public importance today because the opposition chose to gag debate last night on the infrastructure bill. The government gaged debate without the assistant minister, who sits at the table and will respond to this MPI, even making a contribution. They had no summing up to their legislation. They had no consideration in detail process so that the opposition were unable to put the amendments that we had ready to move forward before this House and have debated before this House. So confident are they in their alternative vision for infrastructure that they shut down all debate. It is little wonder, because infrastructure in terms of a portfolio did not exist when they were last in government. Warren Truss, the new minister for infrastructure, is the first ever coalition minister for infrastructure, because they simply did not have any of those processes when they were last in office.

When Labor came to office in 2007, Australia sat at 20 out of 25 OECD countries when it came to investment in infrastructure as a proportion of GDP. Today we stand at second, only behind South Korea. We are second out of 25 OECD countries as a result of our record investment in roads, in rail, in ports and in other nation-building infrastructure. We did it in a coordinated way. We did it in a way which ensured that there was a systematic approach. Our starting point was the realisation that, if you are serious about nation building, you need to decouple the infrastructure investment cycle, which by definition is long term, from the political cycle, which is by definition short term. It is very unusual, indeed, for a minister who gets to announce a project to get to open that project; it is very unusual indeed. It was certainly very rare for those opposite over those 12 years because, frankly, they did not do much.

But we on this side of the House delivered. We established the process of Infrastructure Australia, an independent adviser to government at arm's length. It was opposed by those opposite. We asked Infrastructure Australia to assess the nation's infrastructure needs and create a prioritised list of projects that its experts believed would do the most to boost national productivity. As a result, we delivered 7,500 kilometres of new or upgraded roads; a revitalised rail sector, including better passenger rail in cities; and 4,000 kilometres of new or upgraded track. Because of our investments, seven hours were taken off the rail freight journey from Brisbane to Melbourne and nine hours off the journey from the east to the west coast. It meant that companies made decisions to take freight, such as dry goods from Woolworths, off heavy vehicles and onto rail. This was vital, important work.

We had national strategies through Infrastructure Australia for the first time on ports, on land freight and on infrastructure in Indigenous communities. We of course began the National Broadband Network. It was identified as No. 1 on the themes of Infrastructure Australia because of what it would do to transform the national economy and productivity—very simple. As a result of all of these measures, a coordinated and integrated approach and making sure that Infrastructure Australia could look at the needs of cities and regions in a holistic way—not directing them to look at this or look at that—we got good outcomes. You yourself know this, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, because you have acknowledged the work that we have done on the Warrego Highway, upgrading a bridge that you got to open in recent times and other work that was not done by the former government over those 12 years. This was record investment.

Since taking office, the new government has dedicated itself to annihilating all Labor reforms on principle, regardless of any policy implications. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and his ministers are, like in an episode of Doctor Who, in the role of Daleks whose only instinct is to exterminate any resemblance of Labor in government. Action on climate change? They say no. The mining tax? No. The National Broadband Network? No. Gonski education reforms? No, then yes, then no, then yes, then no, then yes, then no. The fact is that those opposite have a view that they will be defined by what they are against.

The legislation to eliminate the independence of Infrastructure Australia is a real concern. It gives the minister the right to direct the organisation to what it should consider or, importantly, what it must not consider. That is not evidence based process; it is a recipe for politically motivated interference. It is a step backwards. But that is just the first item in the catalogue of shame, which includes the abolition of Labor's Major Cities Unit and the refusal to honour more than 560 grants that are in the budget under the Regional Development Australia Fund. They say this nonsense about stuff that was in the May budget.

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