Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to do so. This bill will enable the rollout of Roads to Recovery over six years and help to build vital road and rail projects. As someone who represents a third of New South Wales I fully understand the importance of having good road and rail projects. I would like to pay tribute to one of my predecessors, John Anderson, a former member for Gwydir, who was the minister at the time the Roads to Recovery program was mooted. I might also say that it came from a meeting that was held at Moree, in my electorate, organised by the Moree Plains Shire Council.

This bill will continue the rollout of the program until 30 June 2019, with $1.75 billion in funding. As someone who was previously a mayor of the Gwydir Shire Council I have a great understanding of the importance of the Roads to Recovery program. Roads to Recovery has been one of those programs that you will find no criticism of anywhere in this place, on either side of the House. It is a direct connection of funding from the federal government to local government. The programs are decided by the local government, and a large proportion of the money actually hits the asset where it is supposed to.

As someone who represents 17 local government areas I should say that if it was not for the Roads to Recovery program many of my councils would be in a lot of financial strife. Roads to Recovery funding in my electorate, over the length of the program, is something like $72 million. That is not only enabling many kilometres of new roads and road repairs to be laid out but it is also providing a valuable cash flow and resource for the councils in my area.

This bill will also allow the continuation of the Black Spot Program in places that have been identified as high risk. Even though the road toll over the last 20 or 30 years has been halved in Australia, it is still way too high. Unfortunately many of the people who die on our roads do so on rural roads, and many of them are still dying in identified black spot areas. This program will allow funding to go to those areas.

It is important to realise that pretty much everything we buy on the shelves of our supermarkets started its journey on a local road. Roads to Recovery is directly funding local roads. It does not apply to state roads and it does not apply to national highways. It is direct funding to councils for local roads.

In the Parkes electorate, there are many farms and businesses—that rely on local roads—that generate billions of dollars of export income and provide produce that finds its way onto the shelves of supermarkets not only around Australia but around the world. While this program is very much appreciated, we must not think that we are doing enough for local roads. We need to be constantly looking at how we can continue to fund local roads. I would like to mention the Australian Rural Road Group that was formed by the Gwydir and Moree Plains councils. It has nearly 100 members right around Australia—councils that represent the high-producing agricultural shires in Australia and generally the councils that have low population densities but very high productivity. Quite often, the criterion that is used to measure the use of a road and the need for the funding or the upgrade of a road is traffic count. But that is not enough. We need to be looking at the productivity and the produce that come along the roads and the efficiency that that brings.

The advent of the inland rail line from Melbourne to Brisbane took another step forward with the change of government. Minister Truss has allocated $300 million in the next term of government to get that project up and running. The implementation committee for that project was formed and chaired by my predecessor, John Anderson. That inland rail will provide a steel backbone for infrastructure right down the eastern side of Australia. It will be to Australia what the Mississippi is to the United States. We need to start planning our infrastructure around this inland rail line. We need to start to looking at where local road and rail interface and at how we can get the travel time down to the ports and the major markets, and do it in a more energy efficient way. This rail line will certainly do that.

The main rail line that goes from Sydney to Perth runs through the bottom end of the Parkes electorate. To see double-stacked container trains nearly two kilometres long hurtling through the electorate certainly shows that this is the way of the future to shift freight. It is not much good if we have beef from feedlots or grain or cotton that is stranded on farm because of crummy infrastructure. As we speak, the forecast for rain this week across inland New South Wales and Queensland is very strong. That is a two-edged sword. While we will never not look forward to rainfall, it will mean that children will not be going to school and produce will not be going to market because of the state of the roads.

The issue here with rural roads is how did we got to this point? I would like to compliment the Rural Road Group, because they are working on a pilot program with half a dozen or so local government areas in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland that will measure the actual asset of the road. What has happened in the past—and I know this from experience as a mayor in a local government area—is that, quite often, the value of the write-down of those road assets has not been fully displayed. Because of the close relationship between local government and state government and the very parlous nature of the finances of local government, quite often the full level of the write-down of roads is not reported and it shows up on the balance sheet as a large loss, and the next thing you know is that that local government area is under the watchful eye of the state government for being in financial difficulty. So over the years, the actual size of the problem has been disguised somewhat. What is happening now in Moree Plains, Gwydir, Narrabri and some of the council areas in southern Queensland is that they are developing an asset management tool that can be transferred right across Australia. So at one point, as a government we can look at the state of every road in Australia and it will be in a recognised reporting system. We will be able to start to identify some priorities as to where the funds need to go and to start to have an objective look at allocating these assets. The real state of affairs has been hidden for some time. It is time that we looked at managing our assets in a more professional way and it is time that we started tying in the productivity of regional Australia with some of the spending on our road networks.

It does give me a great deal of pleasure to support this bill knowing that we have a government and a minister totally focused on infrastructure, and that we are starting to see a planned rollout for transport infrastructure across Australia and indeed regional Australia. Not only does this tie into the lifestyle effects that I have talked about—getting produce to market, kids to school, people to hospital and the like—but, as we need to be careful with our resources and as we become more aware of the need to preserve what resources we have, we need to be moving this freight around in the most cost-effective way. The road-rail interchange model that is being formulated at the moment is definitely a more cost-effective means to go about it. The number of trucks that that inland rail will take off the Newell Highway will be increased and the number of litres of diesel per tonne of freight moved will be drastically reduced because of this program.

Therefore, I am in support of the Land Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. It is a commitment of $35.5 billion in infrastructure investment. It will roll out over six years and, so, local government and infrastructure organisations will have the confidence to know that that funding is ongoing and, every time there is a change government, we will not have to go into this area of uncertainty. It does indicate that the Abbott-Truss government is committed to infrastructure. It does indicate that I am committed to infrastructure. I encourage anyone that is listening to me today to refer to my first speech in this place, in February 2008. Indeed, this is what I spoke about—the need for funding for regional roads, the need for a railway line from Melbourne to Brisbane and the need for a plan to tie it all together. It is such a relief, and it gives me great pleasure, after being in this place for over six years now, to finally be part of a team that has the will, the plans and the gumption to make all this happen.

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