Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Your colours are on the signs, true! By contrast, the Liberals and the Nationals scrapped billions in Labor funding for Perth's public transport and Brisbane's Cross River Rail project—what a shame. The Brisbane project was good project, proposed by Campbell Newman. I am not a big fan of Campbell Newman, but if a project that he puts forward does something good for the city we will back it. That is the newsflash for the day. The federal government have also scrapped billions of dollars, part of that being for the Melbourne Metro and Adelaide's Tonsley Park public transport project. Shame; shame on them for that. They were great projects. We do not care who is in government; we will support good infrastructure. The Liberals and Nationals are not proceeding with a whole range of really good Labor projects, including inland rail, and when they do continue with something that has already been delivered, done, paid for—people are already driving on the roads—they are just putting up a new sign, a new badge, saying they did it. I will look to my colleagues for guidance because I am not sure if all governments do that, but this new government take it up to a new level. Everything is re-badged—it is a little bit George Orwellian. It is all a bit rich.

As we move forward, they do have a second chance. This is a bunch of Liberals and a bunch of Nats who get a second go at it—a second go at the public purse, a second chance to invest in our national economy and invest in infrastructure, a second chance to get the job done right, a second chance to continue the good work that Labor did. Apart from the six years of good Labor government, and we did a lot in infrastructure, when was the other time that major spending approached something even close to the equivalent of what we did? You have to go back to Whitlam. There was not too much in between, and there was not too much before. In between, we had John Howard and his view that it was not just the responsibility of the federal government; it was for the states to do. We did not agree, we thought that a little bit of the lifting could be done by the Commonwealth. It appears now that the Liberals would agree with us. The Nationals may have always agreed with us, but maybe not publicly. Now they have got a second chance.

We need to have a very close look under this cloak of cover, this cloak of darkness that has been put over all of this getting rid of red tape and regulations. We all support getting rid of red tape and we all support getting rid of regulations. In fact, Labor did lots and lots of that, and the more research I did into this the more I realised that we did more than what these guys are proposing to do. The reality is we just did not do the big stunts; we did not have these regulations repeal days, as if they are something special.

The reality is that this is the normal course of business of any government. You should be repealing red tape; you should be getting rid of redundant acts. These guys are so smart they repealing the Flags Act 1953! They are so smart they probably have not picked it up yet! They are going to repeal an amendment act from 1953 which stipulated the minimum size of the star on the flag. They feel that when they are burning those 50,000 redundant pages of regulation they are burning an amendment which has been around for 60 years on our flag. It is just unbelievable. They expect people to believe that somehow this is going to save money for consumers or small business. I have not had too many consumers or small businesses ring me up and say, 'My No. 1 priority is to get rid of that 1953 flags act amendment.'

My favourite piece of infrastructure is, of course, the Ipswich Motorway, because it goes through my electorate and it goes through Blair. It goes from Brisbane and Ipswich to Toowoomba. I would dare to say that there is no greater piece of infrastructure, except perhaps the Snowy Hydro. However, if you compare it to the Snowy Hydro, it was actually a bigger project. It was a bigger project in all senses of the word, by any measure that you take. We delivered it under budget and under time. It was a successful partnership between federal government, state government, local government and the private sector. It was a true example of what could be done when you are committed to infrastructure, to depoliticising, to working with your state partners and to working with everybody. We delivered something for the Western corridor that has meant that since the upgrade we have not had a death on the road. I think people should ponder that for a little while.

There is a lot to say on this, but I emphasise: Labor has a proven track record. We deliver on roads and infrastructure, whereas the LNP just talk about it.

See this speech in context