Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

broadband plans over a period of 12 years. There had been lots of planning and lots of announcement, but not much in the way of improving the broadband in this country. Under the Howard government, infrastructure spending and infrastructure delivery was at all-time historic low. Tony Abbott was a senior minister in the government at that time, so we can only conclude that that is where he has got his lessons from because he has not had a very good start. What have we seen in the first six months? Prior to the election and immediately after it, we had the Prime Minister say that the Commonwealth should 'stick to its knitting' when it comes to investing in infrastructure. Well, it is all needles and no wool, because there is not a lot knitting going on at all.

We have seen significant cuts to infrastructure spending. Important, nation-building, critical economic transport infrastructure has been cancelled or put on hold. I have in mind the Melbourne Metro. The member for Deakin got up and spoke at great length about the importance of the road projects; he had nothing to say about rail networks within the broader Melbourne metropolitan area. As any transport planner knows, unless you look at these things as a system—that is, the interaction of the road network and the public transport systems—you are not to solve road congestion. All you are going to do is build new roads that will very quickly become parking lots because you have not dealt with the underlying systems issues. It is the same thing with Brisbane's Cross River Rail, Hobart's light rail, the Tonsley Park public transport project, the Perth public transport package, the Gawler rail line electrification, the Adelaide transport movement study and the Perth airport rail link. When the Prime Minister uses the word 'infrastructure' he obviously defines out of the concept of infrastructure anything to do with rail and urban public transport. As anybody who knows anything about transport infrastructure will tell you, if you try and deal with one mode of infrastructure in isolation from all the rest you are not going to solve transport issues.

There is a bit of focus on Western Australia at the moment, and it is appropriate in this debate that we have something to say about the government's plans for Western Australia. Unlike the Liberals and the National Party, Labor supports a proper mix of infrastructure spending. The Australasian Railway Association report, The value of action versus the cost of inaction,found that investing in rail over roads will get the same result in terms of freeing up congestion, and would cost 57 per cent less in Brisbane and 38 per cent less in Perth. So there you have expert opinion saying that investment in rail is the most cost-effective transport solution to reduce road congestion in Australia's two fastest-growing cities, Brisbane and Perth.

Is it any wonder that when the announcements were made about major road infrastructure projects in Melbourne and the WestConnex in Sydney that there was no cost-benefit analysis—a clear breach of pre-election promises? No cost-benefit analysis, and the reason there was no cost-benefit analysis is because they would not have liked the answer. The answer would have given them those sorts of cost differentials. Do not get me wrong; we support further investment by the Commonwealth into roads. In fact, in government Labor doubled the roads spending, but you need a mix of both. Infrastructure Australia has urged the government not to invest only in certain kinds of projects—a veiled warning to government not to ignore the importance of the rail sector. The expert advice from inside and outside government is clearly to avoid investing in roads to the exclusion of rail because we need a mix of both.

But what do you think the government's plan for Western Australian commuters is? Mr Abbott's plan for Western Australia is for them to spend more time in their cars, because that is the consequence of his policy. His cuts to important urban public transport projects have the consequence of ensuring that people spend more time in their cars. He is on target to deliver that by cutting $500 million from public transport projects in Perth—so that is exactly what they will be doing. There are Liberal senators who are so embarrassed by their own record after almost six months in government that they have been photoshopping photos of the Prime Minister out of their how-to-vote cards. They are photoshopping—removing his photo from their how-to-vote cards because they know that he is a net negative for them when it comes to facing the voters in Western Australia. We saw something very similar in the Griffith by-election.

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