Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I listened to the shadow minister and member for Grayndler with great interest. Part (1)(b)(i) of his motion says that the investment infrastructure makes a vital contribution to economic growth. Yes, we agree with that. It says there is broad support in the House for:

Of course, we all agree with those words but it is worthwhile having a look at what happened over the previous six years and then understanding the reason why we need this change. The first exhibit I will give is the train wreck of the NBN. So far, we have seen after six years of promises just a three per cent rollout. That has cost the taxpayer $7 billion. This is a project that is hopelessly behind schedule and hopelessly over budget. This was a project with the biggest infrastructure spend we had seen under the previous Labor government, and yet it did not have any of the required cost-benefit analysis that we have talked about. It did not have any of the transparency that the former minister talked about. The NBN is the greatest example of why the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill is needed and why this motion should be rejected. One of the great reasons the so-called experts put forward for having an NBN was that we were going to become a gigabit nation. A press release from 19 April says:

Can you guess how many end-users in fact connected to this so-called 'gigabit nation'? The answer is zero: not one single customer took up the offering of the NBN. We were told that it was important that the NBN be rolled out so that the connection speed could go to 250 megabits. But can you guess how many customers have signed up for the NBN's 250 megabits? The answer is one: one single customer.

A further example of the former government's infrastructure problems is the great Epping-to-Parramatta rail link. It was promised in 2010 with great hoopla and publicity, but it was never among the national infrastructure priorities. It was simply an example of pork-barrelling: the former Labor government's rolling out a project for political ends and not for the sake of what the country needs.

We only have to look at what the Australian National Audit Office said about Labor's infrastructure expenditure. In 2010 its report found that Labor had handed $2.2 billion in taxpayers' funds to eight infrastructure projects which its own advisers had questioned as economically unviable or not ready to proceed. This is what happened under the previous Labor government. But do not take my word for it; take the word of Lindsay Tanner, the former finance minister, who attacked his former colleagues and said that they were ignoring the national interest and handing out infrastructure spending irrespective of merit, for political rather than economic gain. Such are the reasons that change is needed.

Another great example of the former government's problems with infrastructure is the Moorebank Intermodal project. Treasury and Infrastructure Australia criticised the former Labor government's plans. They said that the private sector was organised and ready to start but that the former government knew better and wanted to do it itself using public money rather than private money. The government's analysis of the project was completely flawed in many ways. I will go through a few of them in the time left.

Firstly, the government's analysis completely overestimated the growth in the number of containers in Sydney. Between the years 2000 and 2008 there was a very large increase—around eight per cent per annum—in the number of containers in Sydney, and the former Labor government forecast that the same rate of growth would go on forever. But that is not what has happened; the forecast growth has not occurred. There are many reasons for this. One is that the goods that people are buying are becoming smaller. Take books—many people are now buying online books rather than traditional books. Look at how computers are decreasing in size. Compare the size of a flat-screen TV to the old-fashioned-style TV. Many of the goods we are buying are coming down in size. But this was not thought through by the previous government, so they panicked and said, 'We need an intermodal terminal in Western Sydney.'

Secondly, the intermodal concept itself is flawed. The concept is that you put on rail a container which arrives at the port in Sydney, and you take it out to Western Sydney and distribute it from there. I often hear the former minister say that the intermodal project would take trucks off the road. That would be true if the containers ended up in a great big hole where the intermodal terminal was, but the fact is that the goods in the containers would end up going by road anyway unless there were a rail siding next to each of the warehouses where the containers were being unloaded. So an intermodal terminal would not remove trucks from the roads; at best it could reduce the distances that a truck needed to travel by road. That is why it is very important to do an analysis of where the containers would end up before the goods in them were distributed. Guess what? In the former government's analysis, this simply has not been done. What we heard from the former minister was how wonderful all of Labor's plans were, but no analysis was done of where those containers actually go today. I have arranged for that analysis to be done; if we look at it, the market has simply rejected the Liverpool and Moorebank area as a point to distribute containers.

If we look at the map, the majority of Sydney's containers go to the Eastern Creek area. There are 890 TEU movements from that Eastern Creek area, and that is 25 kilometres from where this Moorebank intermodal is going to be located. So why wouldn't you locate—if you are having an intermodal in Western Sydney, you need to have it located where the containers actually end up. There is no point putting it on a rail link, only to have to unload it there and still truck it 25 kilometres away. But, unfortunately, that is what this plan from the previous Labor government does. We also have the Enfield intermodal opening up in the coming months. It will capture anything inland back to the coast from Moorebank. So the whole area around Moorebank has been rejected by the market, and the reason it has been rejected by the market is simply because it is a bad location to distribute containers from. We have the Copeland Road section of the Hume Highway in Liverpool—one of the worst black spots in the country, as identified by the NRMA.

The other thing the previous government failed to do with their infrastructure planning is to look at where the containers need to go tomorrow. And if you look at the plans for Sydney, we have a Western Sydney area of economic development: we have an economic zone there, we have an area of development to the south, an area of development to the north. There are 500,000 residences aimed to go in that area—that is almost half the size of Brisbane—with Badgerys Creek in the middle. If we are going to build an intermodal, the ideal spot in Western Sydney is Badgerys Creek, but unfortunately the previous government's plans never even looked at that.

One of the other real concerns I have is their analysis of the pollution, which was another thing that was done very poorly. Yes, when we put a container on rail rather than road, we burn less diesel fuel. The problem is that when we burn that diesel fuel in the existing locomotives, the particulate matter that those diesel trains spew out, as compared to a modern truck, is actually five to 10 to almost 20 times greater. So we are not going to reduce pollution; this will increase the amount of particulate pollution in Western Sydney, and particulate pollution is the pollution that kills. Overall, it is very important—the previous government's analysis of infrastructure spending was neither transparent nor independent. That is why the change is needed, and that is what this change will do. That is why this motion should be rejected, and the bill should be passed. (Time expired)

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